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Lea diagrammas suivanta illuatrant la mAthodc. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 Q o» ^ ■^ X T— < 1) V ir 01 ffll s (^ ■/) 1 s ^ «> T3 a C a l-H o 0) o H .a ^ a I o ® .2 & ^^ "5 ■o a O u I V» a <2 a cii t. bo a o a. 3 3 X) -o a ID !8 V ! 9 • 0 o» c ■^ V aj ^ P-t v> I 1 § 01 o ^ a> I v(MMi)NnAc, -T- ^irjiUMn >w ■»»4< uiiifcn ;HF NO!, ,., /,,v,L,K(CAN THE Lr.vjLlSH COLONIES CANADA ^ ^ •f rt PARK MAN, Jr. ■*l ■• "J^ -^Wttiiyw BfrtV" STRFf. \ ^ li S' l ^ "3 ill 5> 3 HISTORY OF THE of ^ ^ CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC ■rrr AND THE WAR OF THE NORTH AMERICAN TRIBES AGAINST THE ENGLISH COLONIES AFTER THE CONQUEST OF CANADA j» j» By FRANCIS PARKMAN, Jr. B %5\ Reprinted from the Original Edition A. L. BURT COMPANY, 52-58 DFANE STREET, N \ TO PRESIDE^ OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY, THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED AS A TESTIMONIAL OF HIOH PERSONAL REGARD, AND A TRIBUTE OP RESPECT FOR HIS DISTINGUISHED SERVICES TO AMERICAN HISTORY. 4773 CONTENTS. OHAPTBR I. Introductory.— Indian Tribes East" of the Missis- sippi 1 II. France and England in America 35 III. The French, the English, and the Indians 49 IV. Collision of the Rival Colonies 70 V. The Wilderness and its Tenants at the Close of the French War ja- VI. The English take Possession of the Western Posts. 120 VII. Anger of the Indians.— The Conspiracy 128 VIII. Indian Preparatio j^j IX. The Council at the River Ecorces 143 X. Detroit -g- XI. Treachery of Pontiac 105 XII. Pontiac at the Siege of Detroit igQ XIII. Rout of Cuyler's Detachment.— Fate of the Forest Garrisons jno XrV. The Indians Continue to Blockade Detroit 210 XV. The Fight at Bloody Bridge 223 XVI. Michillimackinac 235 XVII. The Massacre 047 XVIII. Frontier Forts and Settlements. 269 XIX. The War on the Borders 287 • • • Ul iv ^ CONTENTS. T CHAPT.B p^O, XX. The Battle of Bushy Run 294 XXI. The Iroquois.— Ambuscade of the Devil's Hole. ... 808 XXII. Desolation of the Frontiers 816 XXIII. The Indians Raise the Siege of Detroit 884 XXIV. ThePaxtonMen 840 XXV. The Rioters March on Philadelphia 865 XXVI. Bradstreet's Army on the Lakes 870 XXVII. Bouquet Forces the Delawares and Shawanoes to Sue for Peace 897 XXVIII. The Illinois 426 XXIX. Pontiao Rallies the Western Tribes 433 XXX. Ruin of the Indian Cause. 446 XXXI. Death of Fontiac 462 ...294 ... 808 ... 815 ...884 ...840 ... 865 ... 870 B to ... 897 ... 426 ... 483 ...446 ... 482 PREFACE. The conquest of Canada was an event of momentous consequence in American history. It changed the politi- cal aspect of the continent, prepared a way for the inde pendence of the British colonies, rescued the vast tracts of the interior from the rule of military despotism, and gave them, eventually, to the keeping of an ordered de- mocracy Yet to the red natives oi the soil its results were wholly disastrous. Could the French have main- tamed their ground, the ruin of the Indian tribes might long have been postponed ; but the victory of Quebec was the signal of their swift decline. Thenceforth thev were destined to melt and vanish before the advancing waves of Anglo-American power, which now rolled west ward unchecked and unopposed. They saw the danger and, led by a great and daring champion, struggled fierce- y to avert it. The history of that epoch, cfowded as It is with scenes of tragic interest, with marvels of suffer- ing and vicissitude, of heroism and endurance, has been as yet, unwritten, buried in the archives of go;ernments' or among the obscurer records of private adventure Tc! rescue it from oblivion is the object of the following work. It aims to portray the American forest and the ^ doom ^* *^^ ^^^'"^ "^^^ ^""^^ ^^'^^^^^ *^^^^ It is evident that other study than that of the closet is indispensable to success in such an attempt. Habits of early reading had greatly aided to prepare me for the the task J but necessary knowledge of a more practical Ti PREFACE. kind has been supplied by the indulgence of a strong natural taste, which, at various intervals, led me to the wild regions of the north and west. Here, by the camp- fire, or in the canoe, I gained familiar acquaintance with the men and scenery of the wilderness. In 1846, I visited various primitive tribes of the Rocky Mountains, and was, for a time, domesticated in a village of the western Dah- cotah, on the high plains between Mount Laramie and the range of the Medicine Bow. The most troublesome part of tiie task was the collec- tion of the necessary documents. These consisted of letters, journals, reports, and despatches scattered among numerous public offlses, and private families, in Europe and America. When I DUght together, they amounted to about three thousand four hundred manuscript pages. Contemporary nej^^spapers, magazines, and pamphlets have also been examined, and careful search made for every book which, directly or indirectly, might throw light upon the subject. I have visited the sites of all the principal events recorded in the narrative, and gathered such local traditions as seemed worthy of confidence. I am indebted to the liberality of Hon. Lewis Cass for a curious collection of papers relating to the siege of De- troit by the Indians. Other important contributions have been obtained from the state paper offices of London and Paris, from the archives of New York, Pennsylvania, and other states, and from the manuscript collections of sev- eral historical societies. The late William L. Stone, Esq., commenced an elaborate biography of Sir William John- son, which it is much to be lamented he did not live to complete. By the kindness of Mrs. Stone, I was per- mitted to copy from his extensive collection of docu- ments, such portions as would serve the purposes of the following History. To President Sparks of Harvard University, General Whiting, U. S. A., Brantz Mayer, Esq. of Baltimore, Fran- cis J. Fisher, Esq. of Philadelphia, and Rev. George E. Ellis of Charlestown, I beg to return a warm acknowledg- PREFACE. t« Vll ment for counsel and assistance. Mr. Benjamin Periy Poore and Mr. Henry Ste Venn procured copies of valnabiu documents from the archives of Paiis and lA>ndon Henry R. Schoolcraft, Esq. Dr. Elv/yn of Phi!;idelphia, Df . O'Callaghan of Alb tiy, George H. Moor^, Esq. of New York, Lyman C. Draper, Esq., of Philadelphia, Judge Law of Vmcennes, and many others, have kindly contributed materials to the work. Nor can I withhold an expression of thanks to the aid so freely rendered in the dull task of proof-reading and correction. The crude and promiscuous mass of materials presented an aspect by no means inviting. The field of the history was uncultured and nreclaimed, and the l-bor that awaited me was like that of the border settler, who be- fore he builds his rugged dwelling, must fell the forest- trees, burn the undergrowth, clear the ground, and hew the fallen trunks to due proportion. Several obstacles have retarded the progress of the work. Of these, one of the most considerable was the condition of my sight, seriously, though not permanently, impaired. For about three years, the light of day was insupportable, and every attempt at reading or writing completely debarred. Under these circumstances, the task of sifting the materials and composing the work was begun and finished. The papers were repeatedly read aloud by an amanuensis, copious notes and extracts were made, and the narrative written down from my dictation This process, though extremely slow and laborious, was no without its advantages ; and I am well convinced chat the authorities have been even more minutely exam- med, more scrupulously collated, and more thoroughly digested, than they would have been under ordinary cir- cumstances. In order to escape the tedious circumlocution, which, from the nature of the subject, coiUd not otherwise have been avoided the name English is applied, throughout the volume, U> the British American colonists, as well as • •• Vlll PREFACE. to the people of the mother country. The necessity is somewhat to be regretted, since, even at an early period clear distmctions were visible between the offshoot and the par at stock. ' Boston, August 1, 1851. HISTORY OP THE CONSPIRACY OF PO:NriAC. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. INDIAN TRIBES EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI. The Indian is a true child of the forest and the desert. The wastes and solitudes of nature are his congenial home. His haughty mind is imbued with the spirit of the wilderness, and the light of civilization falls on him with a blighting power. His unruly pride and untamed freedom are in harmony with the lonely mountains, cata- racts, and rivers among which he dwells; and primitive America, with her savage scenery and savage men, opens to the imagination a boundless world, unmatched in wild sublimity. The Indians east of the Mississippi may be divided into several great families, each distinguished by a radical peculiarity of language. In their moral and intellectual, their social and political state, these various families ex- hibit strong shades of distinction ; but, before pointing them out, I shall indicate a few prominent characteristics, which, faintly or distinctly, mark the whole in common. ' All are alike a race of hunters, sustaining life wholly or m part, by the fruits of the chase. Each family is split into tribes ; and these tribes, by the exigencies of the hunter life, are a&ain rlivirlp/i iri+r. c»k ^-^^i — i j_ or villages, often scattered far asunder, over a wide extent i I 1i. 2 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. of wilderness. Unhappily for the strength and harmony of the Indian race, each tribe is prone to regard itself, not as the member of a great whole, but as a sovereign and independent nation, often arrogating to itself an import- ance superior to all the rest of mankind ; * and the war- rior whose petty horde might muster a few scores of half- starved fighting men, strikes his hand upon his heart, and exclaims, in all the pride of patriotism, « I am a Jfenomone." In an Indian community, each man is his own master. He abhors restraint, and owns no other authority than his own capricious will; and yet this wild notion of liberty is not inconsistent with certain gradations of rank and influence. Each tribe has its sachem, or civil chief, whose office is in a manner hereditary, and, among many, though by no means among all tribes, descends in the female line ; . o that the brother of the incumbent, or the son of his sister, and not his own son, is the rightful suc- cessor to his dignities.! If, however, in the opinion of the old men and subordinate chiefs, the heir should be disqualified for the exercise of the office by cowardice, incapacity, or any defect of character, they do not scruple to discard him, and elect another in his place, usually fixing their choice on one of his relatives. The office of the sachem is no enviable one. He has neither laws to administer nor power to enforce his commands. His counsellors are the inferior chiefs and principal men of the tribe ; and he never sets himself in opposition to the popular will, which is the sovereign power of these savage democracies. His province is to advise, and not .to dic- * Many Indian tribes bear names which in their dialect signify men, indicating that the character belongs, par excellence, to them. Sometimes the word was used by itself, and sometimes an adjective was joined with it, as original men, men surpass- ing all others. t The dread of female infidelity has been assigned, and with probable truth, as the origin of this custom. The sons of a chief's sister must necessarily be liis kindred ; though his own reputed THEIR PECULIAn CHARACTERISTICS. ^ tate; but should he be a man of energy, talent, and ad- dress, and especially should he be supported by numerous relatives and friends, he may often acquire no small measure of respect and power. A clear distinction is drawn between the civil and military authority, though both are often united in the same person. The functions of war-chief may, for the most part, be exercised by -ly one whose prowess and reputation are sufficient to induce the young men to follow him to battle; and he may, whenever he thinks proper, raise a band of volunteers and go out against the common enemy. We might imagine that a society 'so loosely framed would soon resolve itself into anarchy ; yet this is not the case, and an Indian viUage is singularly free from wranghngs and petty strife. Several causes conspire to this result. The necessities of the hunter Mfe, preventing the accumulation of large communities, make more stringent organization needless; while a species of self/ control mculcated from childhood upon every individual ZlT^'LV''^''''''' '' dignity and mLho™ d greatly aided by the peculiar temperament of the race tends strongly to the promotion of harmony. ThouS: he owns no law, the Indian is inflexible in his adherence to ancient usages and customs; and the principle of hero-worship, which belongs to his nature, inspires him ^th deep respect for the sages and captains of'^his tri^ th. Jf f '^"^rf "* .^t '"^^^*^^^' ^^d the absence o the passions which wealth, luxury, and the other incidents of cmhzation engender, are favorable to internal har- tonkin f\ 'T^ '^^'' "'^'t "^«^i«« be ascribed too many of his virtues, which would quickly vanish, were he elevated from his savage state ' ^ A peculiar social institution exists among the Indians highly curious in its character; and thou^ I am not prepared to .ay that it may be traced thLgh all the tribes east of the Mississippi, yet its prevalence is so for^f "^ — ^"^' "^""-"^^-^^ puiiuuai reiatioiis so impor- tant, as to claim especial attention. Indian communities, i ;i 4 THE C0NS1>IRACY OF PONTIAC. independently of their local distribution into tribes, bands, and villages, are composed of several distinct clans. Each clan has its emblem, consisting of the figure of some bird, beast, or reptile-; and each is distinguished by the name of the animal which it thus bears as its device ; as, for example, the clan of the Wolf, the Deer, the Otter, or the Hawk. In the language of the Algonquins, these emblems are known by the name of Totems* The mem- bers of the same clan, being connected, or supposed to be so, by ties of kindred, more or less remote, are prohibited from inter-marriage. Thus Wolf cannot marry Wolf ; but he may, if he chooses, take a wife from the clan of Hawks, or any other clan but his own. It follows that when this prohibition is rigidly observed, no single clan can live apart from the rest; but the whole must be mingled together, and in every family the husband and wife must be of different clans. To different totems attach different degrees of rank and dignity; and those of the Bear, the Tortoise, and the Wolf are among the first in honor. Each man is proud of his badge, jealously asserting its claims to re- spect ; and the members of the same clan, though they may, perhaps, speak different dialects, and dwell far asunder, are yet bound together by the closest ties of fraternity. If a man is killed, every member of the clan feels called upon to avenge him ; and the wayfarer, the hunter, or the warrior is sure of a cordial welcome in the distant lodge of the clansman whose face perhaps he has * Schoolcraft, Oneota, 173. The extraordinary figures intending to represent tortoises, deer, snakes, and other animals, which are often seen appended to In- dian treaties, are the totems of the chiefs, who employ these de- vices of their respective clans as their sign manual. The device of his clan is also sometimes tattooed on the body of the warrior. The word tribe might, perhaps, have been employed with as much propriety as that of clan, to indicate thetotemic division ; but as the former is constantly employed to represent the local nr noHtifia.1 divisinns nf f.Vtft Tn/lian rana Vtf\r\a\aaa onnfiioi^n ,^^■.,^A arise from using it in a double capacity. THE IROQUOIS. g never seen. It may be added that certain privileges, highly prized as hereditary rights, sometimes reside in particular clans such as that of furnishing a sachem to the tribe or of performing certain religious ceremonies or magic rites. The Indians east of the Mississippi may be divided into three great families ; the Iroquois, the Algonquin, and the Mobihan, each speakmg a language of its o^ varied by numerous dialectic forms. To these families must be added a few stragglers from the great western race of the Dahcoteh besides several distinct tribes of the south, each to itself. The Mobilian group embraces the motley con- federacy of the Creeks, the crafty Choctaws, and the staunch and warlike Chickasaws. Of these, and of the distinct tribes dwelling in their vicinity, or within their limits, I shall only observe that they offer, with many modifications, and under different aspects, the same es- sential features which mark the Iroquois and the Aleon- quins, the two great families of the north.* The latter who were the conspicuous actors in the events of the en-' suing narrative, demand a closer attention THE IROQUOIS FAMILY. Foremost in war, foremost in eloquence, foremost in the r savage arts of policy, stood the fierce people called by themselves the Hodenosaunee, and by the French the Iroquc'.s a name which has since been applied to the en- ThPv riT^f .*^'^ *"'^^^ *^^ dominant member. Ihey extended their conquests and their depredations ^.ll'^^^^^^'i ^l"""" ^^^^''''^ passages in the writings of Adair ern tribe'« 't «''"'' *'"V^^ totem prevailed among the tut^ LformpH n,i f ^ conversation with the late Albert Gallatin, he tation a? W« w^^J"^ Tf *?*^ ^^ *'^^ ^*^^«^« ^^ * Choctaw depu! tat^on at Washmgton, that in their tribe were eight totemic clans divided mio two classps. of fo«r oo«», t* ,• ° _ •'"ternic cians, ine same number of clans, and the same division into classes were to be found among the Five Nations, or Iro^L's ' THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. > in i'l from Quebec to the Carolinas, and from the western prairies to the forests of Maine.* On the south, they forced tribute from the subjugated Delawares, and pierced the mountain fastnesses of the Cherokees with incessant foray s.f On the north, they uprooted the ancient settle- ments of the Wyandots ; on the west, they exterminated the Eries and the Andastes, and spread havoc and dismay among the tribes of the Illinois ; and on the east, the In- dians of New England fled at the first peal of the Mohawk war-cry. Nor was it the Indian race alone who quailed before their ferocious valor. All Canada shook witli the desolating fury of their onset ; the people fled to the forts for refuge ; the blood-besmeared conquerors roamed like wolves among the burning settlements, and the youthful colony trembled on the brink of ruin. The Iroquois iri some measure owed their triumphs to the position of their country ; for they dwelt within the present limits of the state of New York, whence several gT-eat rivers and the inland oceans of the northern lakes opened ready thoroughfares to their roving warriors * Frangois, a well-known Indian belonging to the remnant of the Penobscots living at Old Town, in Maine, told me, in the summer of 1843, that a tradition wa8 current, among his people, of their being attacked in ancient times by the Mohawks, or, as he called them, Mohogs, a tribe of the Iroquois, who destroyed one of their villages, killed the men and women, and roasted the small children on forked sticks, like apples, before the fire. When he began to tell his story, Franfois was engaged in patch- ing an old canoe, in preparation for a moose hunt; but, soon growing warm with his recital, he gave over his work, and at the conclusion exclaimed with great wrath and earnestness, "Mohog all devil I " t The tribute exacted from the Delawares consisted of wampum, or beads of shell, an article of inestimable value with the Indians. " Two old men commonly go about, every year or two, to receive this tribute ; and I have often had opportunity to observe what anxiety the poor Indians were under, while these two old men remained in that part of tl^e country where I was. An old Mohawk sachem, in a poor blanket and a dirty shirt, may be seen issuing his orders with as arbitrary an authofity as a Roman dictator."— Golden, Hist. Five Nations, 4. THE IROGUOIS. » uTfl^^ *^* '"'^'*"^"* wilderness. But the true foun- tom of their success is to be sought in their own hiere^t energ.es. wrought to the most effective action ™der a political fabnc well suited to the Indian life; i"Teir mentol and moraJ organization; in their insatiable arab- tion and restless ferocity. In their scheme of government, as in their social cus- toms and religious observances, the Iroquois displayelTn full symmetry and matured strength, the same character" istics which in other tribes are found distorted, withered decayed to the root^ or. perhaps, faintly visible in anTm: perfect gem. They consisted of five tribes or mtiZ the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Onondagas. the C^uZ' and the Scne«is, to whom a sixth, the Tiscarorarwts afterwards added. To each of these tribes belonged an organ,zation of its own. Each had several sach< mf who with the subordinate chiefs and principal men rZlIted all Its internal affairs ; but, when foreign powL Ttl^ be treated with, or matters involving the whole coTfede^ acy required deliberation, all the safhems of the sevemi W TZ'Zr'fr'"'''' '' *« great cS nouse, in the Valley of Onondaga. Here ambassador, were received, alliances were adjufted, and alUuS o? general interest discussed with exemplary harmo^ 1 the Unfted sSren's^e^"'' "'"f""' ?''»"«™''-«. a bishop of of ba,k. On each .idf S'sXw ere ^reeTSTnTarnT '""' persons. No one was admitted besides the membl^of f «^ "^ stear^s^rijtturrrr^^^^^^^ The speaker uttered his wordlTf ^."™'^«. ^oWng their pipes, few n'otes at the cl" of elcl^enterf "^w" ' "'^^'^ ""'"« " to the council was oonfirn^^ w n tu ^ '"*™'" ™' pleasing And, at the enZf 2 s™ecK I? ^ '^^ "'°'^ ^^' <" ^es^ tered bearing a large kettle flHed w°th meat uTn ^„°,"™ *"" their shoulders, which was first ,>rJ^r,tZt'\TllJ!°^\^">^ Ckio"r:k^'onhVket?rwTthTT"''°'^^^^^^^^ « or me kettle, with which every one might at Ill I i di 8 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. The order of debate was prescribed by time-honored cus- toms ; and, in the fiercest heat of controversy, the assem- bly maintained its iron self-control. ^ But the main stay of Iroquois polity was the system of totemship. It was this which gave the structure its elastic strength ; and but for this, a mere confederacy of jealous and warlike tribes must soon have been rent asunder by shocks from without or discord from within. At some early period, the Iroquois must have formed an individual nation ; for the whole people, irrespective of their separation into tribes, consisted of eight totemic clans; and the members of each clan, to what nation soever they belonged, were mutually bound to one an- other by those close ties of fraternity which mark this singular institution. Thus the five nations of the con- federacy were la-->$i-'^ mn^^z 10 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. I i! IFM dence ; and, following the sound, they saw, seated among the trees, a monster of so hideous an aspect, that, one and all, they stood benumhed with terror. His features were were wild and frightful. He was encompassed by hissing rattlesnakes, which. Medusa-like, hung writhing from his head ; and on the ground around him were strewn im- plements of incantation, and magic vessels formed of human skulls. Recovering from their amazement, the warriors could perceive that in the mystic words of the chant, which he still poured forth, were couched the laws and principles of the destined confederacy. The tradition further declares that the monster, being sur- rounded and captured, was presently transformed to human shape, that he became a chief of transcendent wisdom and prowess, and to the day of his death ruled the councils of the, now united tribes. To this hour, the presiding sachem of 'the council at Onondaga inherits from him the honored name of Atotarho. The traditional epoch which preceded the auspicious event of the confederacy, though wrapped in clouds and darkness, and defying historic scrutiny, has yet a char- acter and meaning of its own. The gloom is peopled thick with phantoms; with monsters and prodigies, shapes of wild enormity, yet offering, in the Teutonic strength of their conception, the evidence of a robustness of mind unparalleled among tribes of a different lineage. In these evil days, the scattered and divided Iroquois were beset with every form of* peril and disaster. Giants, cased in armor of stone, descended on them from the mountains of the north. Huge beasts trampled down their forests like fields of grass. Human heads, with streaming hair and glaring eyeballs, shot through the air like meteors, shedding pestilence and death throughout the land. A great horned serpent rose from Lake On- tario ; and only the thunder-bolts of the skies could stay his ravages, and drive him back to his native deeps. The skeletons of men, victims of some monster of the forest, were seeu swimming m the Lake of Teungktoo: and THEIR MYTHS AND LEGENDS. It around the Seneca village on the Hill of Genundewah, a two-headed serpent coiled himself, of size so monstrous that the wretched people were unable to ascend his scaly sides, and perished in multitudes by his pestilential breath. Mortally wounded at length by the magic arrow of a child, he r. lied down the steep, sweeping away the forest with his writhings, and plunging into the lake below, where he lashed the black waters till they boiled with blood and foam, and at length, exhausted with his agony, sunk, and perished at the bottom. Under the Falls of K^iagara dwelt the Spirit of the Thunder, with his brood of giant sons ; and the Iroquois trembled in their villages when, amid the blackening shadows of the storm, they heard his deep shout roll along the firmament. The energy of fancy, whence these barbarous creations drew their birth, displayed itself, at a later period, in that peculiar eloquence which the wild democracy of the Iroquois tended to call forth, and to which the mountain and the forest, the torrent and the storm, lent their stores of noble imagery. That to this imaginative vigor was jomed mental power of a different stamp, is witnessed by the caustic irony of Garangula and Sagoyewatha, and no less by the subtle policy, sagacious as it was treacherous, which marked the dealings of the Iroquois with surround- ing tribes.* » For traditions of the Iroquois see Schoolcraft, Notes, Chap. IX. Gusick, History of the Five Nations, and Clark, Hist. Onon- daga, I. Cusick was an old Tuscarora Indian, who, being disabled by an accident from active occupations, essayed to become the his- torian of his people, and produced a small pamphlet, written in a language almost unintelhgible, and filled with a medley of tra- ditions in which a few grain3 of truth are inextricably mingled with a tangled mass of absurdities. He relates the monstrous legends of his people with an air of implicit faith, and traces the presiding sachems of the confederacy in regular descent from the nrst Atotarho downwards. His work, which was printed at the luscarora village, near Lewiston, in 1828. is illuatratifld hvspv«rai r^^ae engravings representing the Stone Giants, the Flying Heads, and other traditional monsters. !ii < Ph 'yU IS THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. With all this intellectual superiority, the arts of life among them had not emerged from their primitive rude- ness; and their coarse pottery, their spear and arrow heads of stone, were in no way superior to those of many other tribes. Their agriculture deserves a higher praise In 1696, the invading army of Count Frontenac fouTid the maize fields extending a league and a half or two leagues from their villages ; and, in 1779, the troops of General Sullivan were filled iv^ith amazement at their abundant stores of corn, beans, and squashes, an 1 at the ancient apple orchards wh' h grew around their settle- ments. Their dwellings and works of defence were far from contemptible, either in their dimensions or in their struc- ture; and though by the several attacks of the French and especially by the invasion of De Nouville, in I687' and of Frontenac, nine years later, their fortified towns were levelled to the earth, never again to reappear • yet m the works of Champlain and other early writers we find abundant evidence of their pristine condition. Along the banks of the Mohawk, among the hills and hollows of Onondaga, in the forests of Oneida and Cayuga, on the romantic shores of Seneca Lake and the rich borders of the Genesee, surrounded by waving maize fields, and en- circled from afar by the green margin of the forest, stood the ancient strongholds of the confederacy. The cluster- ing dwellings were encompassed by palisades, in single double, or trinJe rows, pierced with loopholes, furnished with platfoTTLi.^ within, frr the convenience of the de- fenders, vf.lii m«i.gazines of stones to hurl upon the heads of the enemy, and with water conductors to extinguish any fire which might be kindled from without.* * Lafitau, Moeurs des Sauvages Ameriquains, II. 4-10 Frontenac, in his expedition against the Onondagas! in 1696. (see Official Journal, Doc. Hist. New York, I. 332,) found one of their villages built in an oblong form, with four bastions The wall was formed of three rows of palisjides, those of the outer row Demg forty or lif ty feet high. The usual figure of the Iro'- THEIR FORTS AND VILLAGES. 18 The area which these defences enclosed was often several acres in extent, and the dwellings, tanged in order within, were sometimes more than a hundred feet in length. Posts, flrnily driven into the ground, v/ith an intervening framework of poles, formed tlie basis of the structure; and -'s sides and arched rck of the house ; on these joists they lay large pieces of bark, and 01 extraordinary occasions spread mats made of rushes : this favor we had ; on these floors they set or lye down, every one as he will ; the apartments are divided from each other by boards or bark, six or seven foot long, from the lower floor to the upper on which they put their lumber, when they have eaten their homony, as they set in each apartment before the fire : they can put the bowl over head, having not above five foot to re^ch ; they set on the floor sometimes at each end, but mostly at one ;' they have a shed to put their wood into in the winter, ov in the sum- mer, to set to converse or play, that has a door to the south ; all the sides and roof of the cabin are made of bark, hnnnd fasf t^ poles set in the ground, and bent round on the top, or set aflatt for the roof, as we set our rafters ; over each fireplace they leave : 14 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. I. J In the long evenings of midwinter, when in the wilder- ness without the trees cracked w:th biting cold, and the forest paths wore clogged with snow, tii ii, around the lodge-fires of the Iroquois, wsirriors, squaws, and restless naked children were clustered in socijil groups, each dark face brightening in the Heckle fii-elight, while, with jest imd laugh, the pipe passed round from hand to hand. Perhaps some shrivelled old warrior, t!ie story-teller of the tribe, recounted to attentive ears the deeds of ancient heroism, legends of spirits and monsters, or tales of witches and vampires— superstitions not less rife among this all-believing race, than among the nations of the transatlantic world. The life of the Iroquois, though void of those multi- plymg phases which vary the routine of civilized exist- ence, was one of sharp excitement and sudden contrast. The chase, the war-path, the dance, the festival, the game of hazard, the race of political ambition, all had their votaries. When the assembled sachems had resolved on war against some foreign tribe, and when, from their great council-house of bark, in the Valley of Onondaga, their messengers had gone forth to invite the warriors to arms, then from east to west, through the farthest bounds of the confederacy, a thousand warlike hearts caught up the summons with glad alacrity. With fasting and pray- ing, and consulting dreams and omens ; with invoking the war-god, and dancing the frantic war-dance, the war- riors sought to insure the triumph of their arms • and these strange rites concluded, they began their stealthy progress, full of confidence, through the devious path- ways of the forest. For days and weeks, in anxious expectation, the villagers await the result. And now as evening closes, a shrill, wild cry, pealing from afar, o'ver the darkening forest, proclaims the return of the victori- a hole to let out the smoke, which, in rainy weather, they cover with a piece of bark, and this they can easily reach witli a pole to push It on one side or quite over tho hnlo • off«,. tiiig m"-'-' are most of their cabins built. "-Bartram, ^Observations 40 '^^^' THE WAR-PATH. 16 ous warriors. Tho village is alive with sudden commo- tion ; and snatching sticks and stones, knives and hatch- ets, men, women, and children, yelling like flends let loose, swarm out of the narrow portal, to visit upon the miserable captives a foretaste of the deadlier torments in store for them. And now, the black arches of the forest glow with tbe fires of death ; and with brandished torch and firebrand the frenzied multitude close around theii victim. The pen shrinks to write, the heart sickens to conceive, the fierceness of his agcmy ; yet still, amid the din of his tormentors, rises his clear voice of scorn and defiance. The work is done; the blackened trunk is flung to the dogs, and, with clamorous shouts and hoot- ings, the murderers seek to. drive away the spirit of their victim.* The Iroquois reckoned these barbarities among their most exquisite enjoyments; and yet they had other sources of pleasure, which made up in frequency and in nmocence all that they lacked in intensity. Each passing season had its feasts and dances, often mingling religion with social pastime. The young had their frolics and merry-makings ; and the old had their no less frequent councils, where conversation and laughter alternated with grave deliberations for the public weal. There were also stated periods marked by tlie recurrence of momentous * "Being at this place the 17 of June, there came fifty pris- oners from the south- west ward. They were of two nations, some rboTtinT ^f " ^"'^' ' )'^ °'^^^ ""'^^ ^' ^"- One nation is w^?h\np '^^^'^ r'"^^ ^'""^ ^"^ Christians, and trade onely with one greatt house, nott farr from the sea, and the other was burnt' ?wo '"^ '^^' "'"; ^ ^^^"^ P^^P^^- T''^« d^y «f them fallen bt it t """ ^^'"^ ^u^k"'"^ "'^^'^^ ^« '^ y" h«"««« ^^d all ye nmired '°^^ ^ ^' '"habitants driving away ye ghosts of crud/rbnrnf f '"^ ^"^ Canagorah, that day theio were most cruel y burnt four men, four women, and one boy. The crueltv irr.±?ji!r:L*^--v^^-they^ aswered;adt^^S^oJ;."l^SS:trrlS^^^ IC THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. ili!: Mil ceremonies, in which the whole community took part- the mystic sacrifice of the dogs, the wUd orgies of the dream feast, and the loathsome festival of the exhumation H 1 H ; ^'*' '" *" '"**™'« «* ^'"- and hmiting, these multiform occupations would often fail ; and while the women were toiling in the cornfields, the lazy war- thMr own^ .^™ght relief from the scanty resources of theu> own mmds, and beguiled the hours with smoking or sleeping, with gambling or gallantry If we seek for a single trait preeminently characteristic wh ^h i "''■T'f'.,'^'' "''*'' *"" '' '" *"* bomidless pride which impelled them to style themselves, not inaptly as XstP'tv?""''!,'"^' "*: >»«" surpassing all others'' f.n '/f"'""^ ""^"^ their great warriors, as he fell wounded among a crowd of Algonquins,-" must I who have made the whole earth tremble, now die by the hands of children ? " Their power kej^t pace with their pride. Their war-parties roamed over half Amerir and their name was a terror from the Atlantic t» the' Mississippi ; bu(^ when we ask the numerical strength of the dreaded confederacy, when we discover that, if the ^nlrt "L^r ^'''*'f ^"""'P'^'' *'•«''' ""i'^d cantons could not have mustered four thousand warriors, we stand amazed at the folly and dissension which leftTo vast a region the prey of a handful of bold marauder Of the cities and villages now so thickly scattered ovS the lost domain of the Iroquois, a single one mght boast triSs? """"'""^ population than aU the five united their aggregate force at two thousand one Ered aTflftv fighting men. The report of Colonel Coureey, agent from v?7 Bmm, at about the same period. eIo»«Iv JZ'J^^J^L _°?? XT" .taiement. Greenhalgh's journal wiirbe"fou.;dVrchatoe"r^' THE HURONS OR V /ANDOTS. j-r From this remarkable people, who mth all the ferocity of their race blended heroic virtues and marked endow- mente of intellect, I pass to other members of the same great family, whose different fortunes may perhans be ascribed rather to the force of circumstance, than tTanv intrinsic inferiority. -^ The peninsula between the Lakes Huron, Erie, ond Ontario was occupied by two distant peoples, speaking dialects of the Iroquois tongue. The Hurons or Wvan- dots, including the formidable bands called by the French the Dionondadies, or Tobacco Nation, dwelt among the forests which bordered the eastern shores of the fresh water sea, to which they have left their name; while the neutral nation, so called from their neutrality in the war between the Hurons and the Five Nations, inhabited the northern shores of Lake Erie, and even extended their eastern flank across the strait of Niagara « J''^' P^^l^'Mon of the Hurons has been variously wobablv r *™ /•^""^"^ '" «-'y thousand souls, but probably did not exceed the former estimate. The f rlT"' *"''■ ^^^ i'""''' ^""^ ^'^■••y ""ong them, and from their copious descriptions it is apparent that in legends and superstitions, manners and habits, religious observances and social customs, this people were cSv assimilated to their brethren of the Five Nations Thdr capacious dwellings of bark, and their palisaded forts seemed copied after the same model. Like the Five Na tions, they were divided into tribes, and cross-divided into ^e^cTnded rti,:f • 'I T'* '".""' '""^ °«'- '^ «-h 1 descended in the female line. The same crude materials of a political fabric were to be found in both ; buTunirke the Iroquois, the Wyandots had not as yet wrought "her^ s£l^t""l''' ^f '" *''« Documentary History of New York t-trX^^th 3mucTdtr"J"^^^ f "'^ revolution, Ihen are given bv Clinfnn in v„-o r*- "' ' ""'''^" "^ «'"«^«u usumates several by JeS^^iL^hi^'^Noter^rgVil^ ^'^ '"'*'™'' '''" 18 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. I Mil ^ili:! into a system, and woven them into an harmonious whole. Like the Five Nations, the Wyandots were in some measure an agricultural people ; they bartered the sur- plus products of their maize fields to surrounding tribes, usually receiving fish in exchange ; and this traffic was so considerable, that the Jesuits styled their country the Granary of the Algonquins.* Their prosperity was rudely broken by th^ rancorous hostilities of the Five Nations ; for though the conflicting parties were not ill matched in point of numbers, yet the united counsels and ferocious energies of the confederacy swept all before them. In the year 1649, in the depth of winter, their warriors invaded the country of the Wyan- dots, stormed their largest villages, and involved all with- m in indiscriminate slaughter. The survivors fled in panic terror, and the whole nation was dispersed and oroken. Some found refuge among the French of Canada, where at the village of Lorette, near Quebec, their descendants still remain ; others were incorporated with their conquer- ors; while others again fled northward, beyond Lake Superior, and sought an asylum among the desolate wastes which bordered on the north-eastern bands of the Dahco- tah. Driven back by those fierce bison hunters, they next established themselves about the outlet of Lake Superior, and the shores and islands in the northern parts of Lake Huron. Thence, about the year 1680, they de- scended to Detroit, where they farmed a permanent set- tlement, and where, by their superior valor, capacity, and address, they soon acquired a marvellous ascendancy over the surrounding Algonquins. The ruin of the Neutral Nation followed close on that of the Wyandots, to whom, according to Jesuit authority, * Bancroft, in his chapter on the Indians east of the Mississippi falj^intoa sliglit mistake when he says that no trade was ^ %V?^- ^t^v^ ^^^ ^^ ^*^® *"'^®^- ^^^ ^" account of the traffic be- tw'een 'the Hurons and Algonauins. seo MemiAr PolQf,•r^« a^^ Hurohs, 1637, p. 171. " "" ' ■""° armonious THE ANDASTES AND ERIES. 19 they bore an exact resemblance in character and manners The Senecas soon found means to pick a quarrel with them ; they were assailed by all the strength of the insa- tiable confederacy, and within a few years their destruc- tion as a nation was complete. South of Lake Erie dwelt two potent members of the Iroquois family. The Andastes built their villages along the valleys of the Alleghany and the Upper Ohio ; while the Erigas, or Eries, occupied the borders of the lake which still retains their name. Of these two nations little is known, for the Jesuits had no missions among them, and few traces of them survive beyond their names and the record of their destruction. The war with the Wyandots was scarcely over, when the Five Nations turned their fratricidal arms against their Erie breth- ren. In the year 1655, using their canoes as scaling ladders they stormed the Erie strongholds, leaped down like' tigers among the defenders, and butchered them without mercy.* The greater part of the nation was involved in the massacre, and the remnant was incorporated with the conquerors, or with other tribes, to which they fled for refuge. The ruin of the Andastes came next in turn ; but this brave people fought for twenty years against their inexorable assailants, and their destruction was not con- summated until the year 1672, when they shared the fate 01 the rest. Thus, within less than a quarter of a century, four nations, the most brave and powerful of the North Ameri- can savages, sank before the arms of the confederates. iN or did their triumphs end here. Withiq^t '^ space they subdued their southern neig^^ * An account of the destruction of the EfS. drawn h n tT'.'^'": ""^^ ^^ ^^"^^ ^^ a" interest!^ lectureJ by O.H. Marshall, Esq., and publishPd in tL jLs ^ Messenger for May and June. 1849. T^a tA,T.: > this subject, as related to the writer by a chiOimwB^Migas. do not agree with the narratives of the Jesuits.^ »3Jl^as, «■■» 20 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. the leading members of the Algonquin family, and ex- pelled the Ottawas, a numerous people of the same lineage, from the borders of the river which bears their name! In the north, the west, and the south, their conquests em- braced every adjacent tribe; and meanwhile their war parties were harassing the French of Canada with reiter- ated inroads, and yellmg the war-whoop under the very walls of Quebec. They were the worst of conquerors. Inordinate pride, the lust of blood and dominion, W( re the mainsprings of then- warfare ; and their victories were stained with every excess of savage passion. That their triumphs must have cost them dear; that, in spite of their cautious tactics, these multiplied conflicts must have greatly abridged their strength, would appear inevitable. Then- losses were, in fact, considerable ; but every breach was repaired by means of a practice which they, in common with other tribes, constantly adhered to. When their vengeance was glutted by the sacrifice of a sufficient number of captives, they spared the lives of the remainder, and adopted them as members of their confederated tribes, separating wives from husbands, and children from parents, and distribu- ting them among different villages, in order that old ties and associations might be more completely broken up. This policy, as Schoolcraft informs us, was designated among them by a name which signifies " flesh cut into pieces and scattered among the tribes." In the years 1714-'15, the confederacy received a great accession of strength. South wi- rds, about the head waters of the Rivers Neuse and Tar, separated from their kindred tribes by intervening Algonquin communities, dwelt the Tuscaroras, a warlike people belonging to the generic stock of the Iroquois. The wrongs inflicted by white set- tlers, and their own undistinguishing vengeance, involved them in a war with the colonists, which resulted in their defeat and expulsion. They emigrated to the Five Nations, whose allies thev had hppn in foT'Tnoi- v^-ot.o „.;*^t, southern tribes, and who now gladly received them, admit- IROQUOIS TRIBES-THEIR CHARACTER. 21 ting them, as a sixth nation, into their confederacy, and assigning to their sachems a seat in the councU-house at Onondaga. It is a remark of Gallatin, that, in their career of con- quest, the Five Nations encountered more stubborn resist- ance from the tribes of their own family, than from those of a different lineage. In truth, all the scions of this war- like stock seem endued with singular vitality and force, and among them we must seek for the best type of the Indian character. Few tribes could match them in prow- ess and constancy, in moral energy and intellectual vigor. The Jesuits remarked that they were more intel- ligent, yet less tractable, than other savages ; and Charle- voix observes that, though the Algonquins were readily converted, they made but fickle proselytes ; while the Hurons, though not easily won over to the church, were far more faithful in their adherence. Of this tribe, the Hurons or Wyandots, a candid and experienced observer declares, that of all the Indians with whom he was con- versant, they alone held it disgraceful to turn from the face of an enemy when the fortunes of the fight were adverse. Besides these inherent qualities, the tribes of the Iro- quois race derived great advantages from their superior social organization. They were all, more or less, tillers ot the soil, and were thus enabled to concentrate a more numerous population than the scattered tribes who live by the chase alone. In their well-peopled and well-con- structed villages, they dwelt together the greater part of the y ;ar ; and thence the religious rites and social and political usages, which elsewhere existed only in the germ attained among them a full and perfect development! iet these advantages were not without alloy, and the Jesuits were not slow to remark that the stationary and thriving Iroquois were more loose in their observance of social ties, than the wandering and starving aavR0-PH nf the north. ^ ' "^ I If ,;miI m iffliiji 22 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. THE ALGONQUIN FAMILY. Except the detached nation of the Tuscaroras, and a few smaller tribes adhering to them, the Iroquois family- were confined to the region south of the Lakes Erie and Ontario, and the peninsula east of Lake Huron. They formed, as it were, an island in the vast expanse of Algon- quin population, extending from Hudson's Bay on the north to the Caroliiias on the south ; from the Atlantic on the east to the Mississippi and Lake Winnipeg on the west. They were Algonquins who greeted Jacques Cartier, as his ships ascended the St. Lawrence. The first British colonists found savages of the same race hunting and fishing along the coasts and inlets of Virginia ; and it was the daughter of an Algonquin chief who in- terceded with her father for the life of the adventurous Englishman. They were Algonquins who, under Sas- sacus the Pequot, and Philip of Mount Hope, waged deadly war against the Puritans of New England ; who dwelt at Penacook under the rule of the great magician, Passaconaway, and trembled before the evil spirits of the Crystal Hills ; and who sang aves and told their beads in the forest chapel of Father Rasles, by the banks of the Kennebec. They were Algonquins who, under the great tree at Kensington, made the covenant of peace with William Penn ; and when Frerxch Jesuits and fur- traders explored the Wabash and the Ohio, they found their valleys tenanted by the same far-extended race. At the present day, the traveller, perchance, may find them pitch- ing their bark lodges along the beach at Mackinaw, spear- ing fish among the boiling rapids of St. Mary's, or skim- ming the waves of Lake Superior in their birch canoes. Of all the members of the Algonquin family, those called by the English the Delawares, by the French the Loups, and by themselves Lenni Lenape, or Original Men, hold the first claim to attention ; for their traditions de- clare them to be the parent seem whence other Algonquin tribes have sprung. The latter recognized the claim, and THE LENNI LENAPE. 23 at all solemn councils, accorded to the ancestral tribe the title of Grandfather.* The first European colonists found the conical lodges of the Lenape clustered in frequent groups about the waters of the Delaware and its tributary streams, within the present hmits of New Jersey and Eastern Pennsyl^ yania. The nation was separated into three divisions, and three sachems formed a triumvirate, who, with the council of old men, regulated all its affairs. Thev were, in some small measure, an agricultural people ; but fishing and the chase were their chief dependence, and through a great part of the year they were scattered abroad, among forests and streams, in search of sustenance. When William Penn held his far-famed council with the sachems of the Lenape, he extended the hand of brother- hood to a people as unwarlike in their habits as his own pacific followers. This is by no means to be ascribed to any mborn love of peace. The Lenape were then in a state of degradmg vassalage, victims to the domineerlnff power of the Five Nations, who, that they might drain to the dregs the cup of humiliation, had forced them to assume the name of Women, and forego the use of arms t Dwellmg under the shadow of the tyrannical confederacy they were long unable to wipe out the blot ; but at length pushed from their ancient seats by the encroachments of white men, and removed westward, partially beyond the PHJIl^n"''^'^; ?m1^^^'' P^'^' °^" *^« other Algonquin tribes Children Grandchildren, Nephews, or Younger Brothers hn? hey confess the superiority of the Wyandots^ anfthe Fiv; Na t\Tl^J ^' t*"l^ ^^^"^ ^^'^ **"^ ^^ U"«l^«- They, in returl caU the Lenape Nephews, or more frequently Cousins. ' " the ntl^o' r^ ^f^. v^ ^^ ^"°^P^ themselves, and recorded with Nationrha/^!? ^^''^' ^^ Loskieland Heckewelder. that the F ve cheaZ ?hf ^«^^«°\»?r^d them, but, by a cunning artifice, hid cheated them into subjection, is wholly unworthy of credit If be thl dun'es !^1T' ?^lf P-P'« - -"te and sLpicirustu^^^^ thatXrpirL^d?^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ V^^^L incredible !!i 24 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. reach of their conquerors, their native spirit began to re- vive, and they assumed a tone of unwonted defiance. During the Old French War they resumed the use of arms, and while the Five Nations fought for the English, they espoused the cause of France. At the opening of the revolution, they boldly asserted their freedom from the yoke of their conquerors ; and a few years after, the Five Nations confessed, at a public council, that the Lenape were no longer women, but men. Ever since that period, they have stood in high repute for bravery, generosity, and all the savage virtues ; and the settlers of the frontier have often found, to their cost, that the women of the Iroquois have been transformed into a race of formidable warriors. At the present day, the small remnant settled beyond the Mississippi are among the bravest marauders of the west. Tlieir war-parties pierce the farthest wilds of the Rocky Mountains ; and the prairie traveller may sometimes meet the Delaware warrior returning from a successful foray, a gaudy handkerchief bound about his brows, his snake locks fluttering in the-wind, his rifle rest- ing across his saddle-bow, while the tarnished and be- grimed equipments of his half- wild horse bear witness that the unscrupulous rider has waylaid and plundered some Mexican cavalier. Adjacent to the Lenape and associated with them in some of the most momentous passages of their history, dwelt the Shawanoes, the Chaouanons of the French, a tribe of bold, roving, and adventurous spirit. Their eccentric wanderings, their sudden appearances and dis- appearances, perplex the antiquary, and defy research ; but from various scattered notices, we may gather that at an early period, they occupied the valley of the Ohio ; that, becomir.g embroiled with the Five Nations, they shared the defeat of the Andastes, and about the year 1672 fled to escape destruction. Some found an asylum in the country of the Lenape, where they lived tenants at will of the Five Nations- ofhpra qoho-^i^ vofno.^ ,•« +i>^ Carolinas and Florida, where, true to their native instincts, THE MIAMIS-THE ILLINOIS. 95 they soon came to blows with the owners of the soil Again, turning northwards, they formed new settlements in the valley of the Ohio, where they were now suffered to dwell m peace, and where, at a later perici, they were jomed by such of their brethren as had found refuge among the Lenape. * Of the tribes which, single and detached, or cohering in loose confederacies, dwelt within the limit? of Lower Canada, Acadia, aud New England, it is needless to speak ; for they offered no distinctive traits demanding notice! 1 assing the country of the Lenape and the Shawanoes, and descending the Ohio, the traveller would have found Its valley chiefly occupied by two nations, the Miamis or fwightwees, on the Wabash and its branches, and the Illinois, who dwelt in the neighborhood of the river to which they have given their name. Though never subiu- gated, as were the Lenape, both the Miamis and the Illinois were reduced to the last extremity by the repeated attacks of the Five Nations ; and the Illinois, in particular, suf- fered so much by these and other wars, that the popula- tion of ten or twelve thousand, ascribed to them by the early French writers, had dwindled, during the first quar- ter of the eighteenth century, to a i;ew small villages. According to Marest, they were a people sunk in sloth and licentiousness ; but that priestly father had suffered much at their hands, and viewed them with a jaundiced eye. Their agriculture was not contemptible ; they had perma- ment dwellings as well as portable lodges ; and though wandering through many months of the year among their broad prairies and forests, there were seasons when their whole population was gathered, with feastings and merrv- maJ^ings, within the limits of their villages Turmng his course northward, traversing the Lakes Michigan and Superior, and skirting the western margin of Lake Huron, the voyager would have found the soli- tudes of the wild waste around him broken bv snatt^r.H Ahfnf.f K^' ^^1^^^^'' P^tt^^wattamies, and Ottawas: About the bays and rivers west of Lake Michigan, he would I5 I I il •■, :l^ I i IN-Ji I" -''!! 26 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. have seen the Sacs, the Foxes, and the Menomonies ; and penetrating the frozen wilderness of the north, he would have been welcomed by the rude hospitality of the wander- ing Knisteneaux. The Ojibwas, with their kindred, the Pottawattamies, and their friends the Ottawas,— the latter of whom were fugitives from the eastward, whence they had fled from the wrath of the Iroquois,— were banded into a sort of confederacy. In blood and language, in manners and character, they were closely allied. The Ojibwas, by far the most numerous of the three, occupied the basin of Lake Superior, and extensive adjacent regions. In their boundaries the career of Iroquois conquest found at length a check. The fugitive Wyandots sought refuge in the Ojibwa hunting-grounds; and tradition relates, that at the outlet of Lake Superior, an Iroquois war-party once en- countered a disastrous repulse. In their mode of life, they were far more rude than the Iroquois, or even the southern Algonquin tribes. The totemic system is found among them in its most imperfect state. The original clans have become broken into frag- ments, and indefinitely multiplied; and many of the ancient customs of the institution are but loosely regarded. Agriculture is little known, and, through summer and winter, they range the wilderness with restless wander- ing, now gorged to repletion, and now perishing with want. In the calm days of summer, the Ojibwa fisher- man pushes out his birch canoe upon the great inland ocean of the north , and as he gazes down into the pellu- cid depths, he seems like one balanced between earth and sky. The watchful fish-hawk circles obove his head; and below, farther than his line will reach, he sees the trout glide shadowy and silent over the glimmering peb- bles. The little islands on the verge of the horizon seem now starting into spires, now melting from the sight, now shaping themselves into a thousand fantastic forms,' with the stranere mirao-p of tha wato^a- "^^^ ^- *- — •^-, that the evU spirits of the lake lie basking their serpent THE ALGONQUINS. ST forms on those unhallowed shores. Again, he explores the watery labyrinths where the stream sweeps among pine-tufted islands, or runs, black and deep, beneath the shadows of moss-bearded firs; or he lifts his canoe upon the sandy beach, and, while his camp-fire crackles on the grass plat, reclines beneath the trees, and smokes and laughs away the sultry hours, in a lazy luxurjr of enjoy- But when winter descends upon the north, sealing up the fountains, fettering the streams, and turning the green- robed forests to shivering nakedness, then, bearing their frail dwellings on their backs, the Ojibwa family wander forth into the wilderness, cheered only, on their dreary track, by the whistling of the north wind, and the hungry howl of wolves. By the banks of some frozen stream, women and children, men and dogs, lie crouched together around the fire. They spread their benumbed fingers over the embers, while the wind shrieks through the fir- trees like the gale through the rigging of a frigate, and the narrow concave of the wigwam .si'urkles with the trost-work of their congealed breath. In vain they beat the magic drum, and call upon their guardian manitoes ; —the wary moose keeps aloof, the bear lies close in his hollow tree, and famine stares them in fh^i face. And now the hunter can fight no more against the nipping cold and blinding sleet. Stiff and stark, with haggard cheek and shrivelled lip, he lies among the snow-drifts ; till with tooth and claw, the famished wildcat strives in vain to pierce the frigid marble of his limbs. Such harsh school- mg is thrown away on the incorrigible mind of the north- ern Algonquin. He lives in misery, as his fathers lived before him. Still, in the brief hour of plenty he forgets the season of want ; and still the sleet and the snow de- scend upon his houseless head.* xaxiUiCK See Tanner. Lone. a,nH TTAnrv a ^^r»r^n«{c.^ *rr .j, the accounts of the Jesuit Le Jeune will show that Algonquin lite m Lower Canada, two hundred years ago, was essentially I I , ,1 II I 28 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. I have thus passed in brief review the more prominent of the Algonquin tribes -. those whose struggles and suf- fermgs form the theme of the ensuing History. In speaking of the Iroquois, some of the distinctive peculiari- ties of the Algonquins have already been hinted at. It must be admitted that, in moral stability and intellectual vigor, they are inferior to the former; though some of the most conspicuous offspring of the wilderness, Meta- com, Tecumseh, and Pontiac himself, boasted their blood and language. The fireside stories of every primitive people are faith- ful reflections of the form and coloring of the national mind ; and it is no proof of sound philosophy to turn with contempt from the study of a fairy tale. The legendary lore of the Iroquois, black as the midnight forests, awful in its gloomy strength, is but another manifestation of that spirit of mastery which uprooted whole tribes from the earth, and deluged the wilderness with blood. The traditionary tales of the Algonquins we, r a different aspect. The credulous circle around an Ojibwa lodge-fire listened to wild recitals of necromancy and witchcraft-meh transformed to beasts, and beasts transformed to men, animated trees, and birds who spoke with human tongue. They heard of malignant sorcerers dwelling among the lonely islands of spell-bound lakes ; of grisly weendigoes, and bloodless geebi ; of evil mani- toes lurking in the dens and fastnesses of the woods- of pygmy champions, diminutive in^ stature, but mighty in soul who, by the potency of charm and talisman, subdued the direst monsters of the waste ; and of heroes, who, not by downright force and open onset, but by subtle strategy, by trick or magic art, achieved marvellous triumphs over the brute force of their assailants. Sometimes the tale will breathe a different spirit, and tell of orphan children abandoned in the heart of a hideous wilderness, beset with fiends and cannibals. Some enamoured maiden, scornful the same with Algonquin life on tho TTnnAr t.o1.„„ ^.. ._ ijlMf. half rt^lnf.,..^ ' ' -rsr— -^^v,-.-.:, TTitiiiii tiii; lasfc hair century. V W 1 ^ 1^ « « RELIGIOUS BELIEF OF THE INDIANS. 29 of earthly suitors, plights her troth to the graceful manito of the grove; or bright aerial beings, dwellers of the sky, descend to tantalize the gaze of mortals with evanescent forms of loveliness. The mighty giant, the God of Thunder, who made his home among the caverns, beneath the cataract of Niagara, was a conception which the deep imagination of the Iroquois might fitly engender. The Algonquins held a simpler faith, and maintained that the thunder was a bird who built his nest on the pinnacle of towering mountains. Two daring boys once scaled the height, and thrust sticks into the eyes of the portentous nestlings ; which hereupon flashed forth such wrathful scintillations, that the sticks were shivered to atoms.* The religious belief of the Algonquins— and the remark holds good, not of the Algonquins only, but of all the hunting tribes of America— ijs a cloudy bewilderment, where we seek in vain for system or coherency. Among a primitive and savage people, there were no poets to vivify its images, no priests to give distinctness and harmony to its rites and symbols. To the Indian mind, all nature was instinct with deity. A spirit was embodied m every mountain, lake, and cataract; every bird, beast, * For Algonquin legends, see Schoolcraft, in Algic Researches and Oneota. Le Jeune early discovered these legends among the tribes of his mission. Two centuries ago, among the Algonquins ot Lower Canada, a tale was related to him, which, in its prin- cipal incidents, is identical with the story of the " Boy who set a Snare for the Sun," recently found by Mr. Schoolcraft among the tribes of the Upper Lakes. Compare Relation, 1637, p. 178 and Oneota, p. 75. Tiie coincidence affords a curious proof of the antiquity and wide diffusion of some of these tales The Dahcotah, as well as the Algonquins, believe that the thunder IS produced by a bird. A beautiful illustration of this Idea will be found in Mrs. Eastman's Legends of the Sioux. An Indian propounded to Le Jeune a doctrine of his own. Accord- ing to his theory, the thunder is produced by the eructations of a monstrous giant, who had unfortunately 3 wallowed a quantity of snakes ; and the latter falling to the earth, caused the appear- . ' "f """"o- ^ •-■"«■* ""e pniiosopuie bxeu nouveUe ! '' ex- claimed the astonished Jesuit. 30 t I j <• . 11^ THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. OT reptile every tree, shrub, or grass-blade, was endued with mystic influence ; yet this untutored pantheism did not exclude the conception of certain divinities, of incon^ gruous and ever-shifting attributes. The sun, too, was a god, and the moon was a goddess. Conflicting powers of good and evil divided the universe ; but if, before the arrival of Europeans, the Indian recognized the existence of a one, almighty, self-existent Being, the Great Spirit, the Lord of Heaven and Earth, the belief was so vague and dubious as scarcely to deserve the name. His per- ceptions of moral good and evil were perplexed and shadowy ; and the belief in a state of future reward and punishment was by no means of universal prevalence ^ Of the Indian character, much has been written fool- ishly, and credulously believed. By the rhapsodies of poets, the cant of pentimentalists, and the extravagance of some who should have known better, a counterfeit image has been tricked out, which might seek in vain for its likeness through every corner of the habitable earth ; an image bearing no more resemblance to its original than the monarch of the tragedy and the hero of the epic poem bear to their living prototypes in the palace and the camp. The shadows of his wilderness home, and the darker mantic of his own inscrutable reserve, have made the Indian warrior a wonder and a mystery. Yet to the eye of rational observation there is nothing unintelligible in him. He IS full, it is true, of contradiction. He deems himself the centre of greatness and^ renown ; his pride is proof against the fiercest torments of fire and steel ; and yet the same man would beg for a dram of whiskey or pick up a crust of bread thrown to him like a dog, from the tent door of the traveller. At one moment, he is wary and can- tiousto the verge of cowardice ; at the next, he abandons himself to a very insanity of recklessness, and the habitual self-restraint which throws an impenetrable veil over emotion is joined to the wild, impetuous passions of a beast or a madman. f--«u h inconsistciicies, strange as they seem in our eyes, THE INDIAN CHARACTER. 31 when viewed under a novel aspect, are but the ordinary- incidents of humanity. The qualities of the mind are not uniform in their action through all the relations of life. With different men, and different races of men, pride, valor, prudence, have different forms of manifestation, and where in one instance they lie dormant, in another they are keenly awake. The conjunction of greatness and littleness, meanness and pride, is older than the days of the patriarchs ; and such antiquated phenomena, displayed under a new form in the unreflecting, undisciplined mind of a savage, call for no special wonder, but should rather be classed with the other enigmas of the fathomless human heart. The dissecting knife of a Rochefoucault might lay bare matters of no less curious observation in the breast of every man. Nature has stamped the Indian with a hard and stern physiognomy. Ambition, revenge, envy, jealousy, are his ruling passions ; and his cold temperament is little exposed to those effemmate vices which are the bane of milder races. With him revenge is an overpowering instinct ; nay, more, it is a point of honor and a duty. His pride sets all language at defiance. He loathes the thought of coercion; and few of his race have ever stooped to discharge a menial office. A wild love of liberty, an utter intolerance of control, lie at the basis of his character, and fire his whole existence. Yet, in spite of this haughty independence, he is a devout hero-wor- shipper ; and high achievement in war or policy touches a chord to which his nature never fails to respond. He looks up with admiring reverence to the sages and heroes of his tribe ; and it is this principle, joined to the respect for age, which springs from the patriarchal element in his social system, which, beyond all others, contributes union and harmony to the erratic members of an Indian com- munity. With him the love of glory kindles into a burning passion ; and to allay its cravings, he will dare cold and famine, fire, tempest, torture, and death itself. These generous traits are overcast by much that is 1 .;J 1 \ 1 I % f ' i 1 * i itm : S i i 32 •1 I m mil THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAO. dark, cod, and sinister, by sleepless distrust, and rank- ling jealousy. Treacherous himself, he is always sus picious of treaehery in others. Brave as he is,-andfew o mankind are braver,-he will vent his passio^ by a seL steb rather than an open blow. His warfare is full o batMi th"«t •'""'^T/ r'' ••« "•'^-- ^hes into warrioi^ of tht rr' ^'^"-''bandonment, with which the Ztrnf fh *'^"' "^^ ^""» themselves into the ranks of their enemies. In his feasts and his drinkine! bouts we find none of that robust and full-toned mrth IX 'K n "'-""^.—a-f our barbar" n cestry. He is never jovial in his cups, and maudlin sorrow or maniacal rage is the sole re^sult oi hTs pi Over all emotion he throws the veil of an iron self control, originating, in a peculiar form of pride Tnd fos tered by rigorous discipline from childhood upward He" s trained to conceal passion, and not to subdul U C S^f a vr"'" " '"^^ '"''««'' by%he hackneyed figure of a volcano covered with snow; and no man can say when or where fie wild-lire will burst forth TWs shallow self-mastery serves to give dignity to public de liberation, and harmony to social life Wrangl ng and quarrel are strangers to an Indian dwelling; and wMe an assemb y of the ancient Gauls was garrulous as a con! vocation of magpies, a Roman senate might have tien a esson from the grave solemnity of an Indian council In the midst of his family and friends,'he hides aifec ions by nature none of the most tender, under a mask o Z' coldness; and in the torturing flr'es of his e^emy the deflfncT ^ ' ""^^"tains to the last his look of grim His intellect is as peculiar as his moral organization Among a 1 savages, the powers of perception preponder- ate over those of reason and analysis; but thl is more especially the case with the Indian. An acute judgrof l^^^l'.^'}''^' "' .''"<='> parts of it as his experience ^^>.xc= iiim CO eomprenend ; keen to a proverb i^ all ex- THE INDIAN CHARACTER. 33 ercises of war and the chase, he seldom traces effects to their causes, or follows out actions to their remote results Though a close observer of external nature, he no sooner attempts to account for her phenomena than he involves himself in the most ridiculous absurdities ; and quite con- tent with these puerilities, he has not the least desire to push his inquiries further. His curiosity, abundantly active within its own narrow circle, is dead to all things else ; and to attempt rousing it from its torpor is but a bootless task. He seldom takes cognizance of general or abstract ideas; and his language has scarcely the power to express them, except through the medium of figures drawn from the external world, and often highly picturesque and forcible. The absence of reflection makes him grossly improvident, and unfits him for pursuing any complicated scheme of war or policy. Some races of men seem moulded in wax, soft and melting, at once plastic and feeble. Some races, like some metals, combine the greatest flexibility with the greatest strength. But the Indian is hewn out of a rock You cannot change the form without destruction of the substance. Such, at least, has too often proved the case Kaces of inferior energy have possessed a power of ex- pansion and assimilation to which he is a stranger • and It is this fixed and rigid quality which has proved his ruin He will not learn the arts of civilization, and he and his forest must perish together. The stern, unchang - mg features of his mind excite our admiration, from their very immutability; and we look with deep interest on the fate of this irreclaimable son of the wilderness, the Child who will not be weaned from the breast of his rugged mother. And our interest increases when we aiscern m the unhappy wanderer, mingled among his vices, the germs of heroic virtues— a hand bountiful to Destow, as it is rapacious to seize, and, even in extremest lamme, imparting its last morsel to a fellow-sufferer : a ir'r^,rv f \'''T^ ''' friendship as in hate, thinks it not too much to lay down life for its chosen comrade; a soul „!i I 34 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. true to its own idea of honor, and burning with an un- quenchable thirst for greatness and renown. The imprisoned lion in the showman's cage differs not more widely from the lord of the desert, than the beg- garly frequenter of frontier garrisons and dramshops ditters from the proud denizen of the woods. It is in his native wilds alone that the Indian must be seen .nd ^Judied. Thus to depict him is the aim of the ensuing History ; and if, from the shades of rock and forest, the savage features should look too grimly forth, it is because tne clouds of a tempestuous war have cast upon the pic- ture their murky shadows and lurid fires. ', CHAPTER II. FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN AMERICA. The American colonies of France and England grew up to maturity under widely different auspices. Canada the offspring of Church and State, nursed from infancy m the lap of power, its puny strength fed with artificial stimulants, its movements guided by rule and discipline Its limbs trained to martial exercise, languished, in spit^ of all, from the lack of vital sap and energy. The col onies of England, outcast and neglected, but strong in native vigor and self-confiding courage, grew yet nTore strong with conflict and with striving, and developed the rugged proportions and unwieldy strength of a youthful giant. "^ In the valley of the St. Lawrence, and along the coasts of the Atlantic, adverse principles contended for the mastery. Feudalism stood arrayed against Democracy • Popery against Protestantism; the sword against the ploughshare. The prost, the soldier, and the noble ruled in Canada. The ignorant, lighthearted Canadian peasant knew nothing and cf.red nothing about popular rights and civil liberties. Born to obey, he lived in con- tented submission, without the wish or the capacity for self-rule. Power, centred in the heart of the system, left the masses inert. The settlements along the margin of the St. LaviTence were like a far-extended camp, where an army lay at rest, ready for the march or the battle, and where war and adventure, not trade and tillage, seemed the chief aims of life. The lords of the soil wpr^ noblemen, for the most part soldiers, or the sons of sol- diers, proud and ostentatious, thriftless and poor; and 35 ' 36 THE CONSPIRACY OP PONTIA J. I' '! the people were their vassals. Over every cln^ter of small white houses glittered the sacred emblem uf the cross. The Church, the convent, and the roadside shrine were seen at every turn ; and in the towns and villages, one met each moment the black robe of the Jesuit, the gray garb of the Recollet, and the formal habit of the Ursuline nun. The names of saints, St. Joseph, St. Ignatius, St. Francis, were perpetuated in the capes, rivers, and islands, the forts and villages of the land, and, with every day, crowds of simple worshippers knelt in adoration before the countless altars of the Roman faith. If we search the world for the sharpest contrast to the spiritual and temporal vassalage of Canada, we shall find it among her immediate neighbors, the stern Puritans of New 'England, where the spirit of non- conformity was sublimed to a fiery essence, and where the love of liberty and the hatred of power burned with sevenfold heat. The English colonist, with thought- ful brow and limbs hardened with toil ; calling no man master, yet bowing reverently to the law which he him- self had made; patient and laborious, and seeking for the solid comforts rather than the ornaments of life ; no lover of war, yet, if need were, fighting with a stubborn, in- domitable courage, and then bending once more with steadfast energy to his farm, or his merchandise,— such a man might well be deemed the very pith and marrow of a ' commonwealth. In every quality of efficiency and strength, the Cana- dian fell miserably below his rival ; but in all that pleases the eye and interests the imagination, he far surpassed nim. Buoyant and gay, like his ancestry of France, he made the frozen wilderness ring with merriment, an- swered the surly howling of tt e pine forest with peals of laughter, and warmed with revelry the groaning ice of the St. Lawrence. Careless and thoughtless, he lived happy in the midst of poverty, content if he could but gain the means to flU his tobacco pouch, and decorate the cap of THE FRENCH CANADIANS. 37 his mistress with a painted ribbon. The example of a beggared nobihty, who, proud and penniless, could only assert their rank by idleness and ostentation, was not lost upon him. A rightful heir to French bravery and French restlessness, he had an eager love of wandering and ad- venture; and this propensity found ample scope in the service of the fur-trade, the engrossing occupation and clue source of income to the colony. When the priest of St. Ann s had shrived him of his sins ; when, after the parting carousal, he embarked with his comrades in the deep-laden canoe ; when their oars kept time to the measured cadence of their song, and the blue, sunny bosom of the Ottawa opened before them; when their root Jthr'^^'f 'T^^ *^' '"^^^y ^^^"^ ^'^d black rocks 01 the rapid ; and when, around their camp-flre they wasted half the night with jests and laughter,- then the Canadian was in his element. His footsteps explored the farthest hidmg-places of the wilderness. In the even mg dance his red cap mingled with the scalp-locks and feathers of the Indian braves ; or stretched on a bear-sMn by the side of his dusky mistress, he watcho,] the gambols of h,s hybrid offspring, in happy oblivion of the partner whom he left unnumbered leagues behind The fur trade engendered a peculiar class of restless bush rangers more akin to Indians than to whito men Those who had once felt the fascinations of the forest were unfitted ever after for a life of quiet labor and with ns spirit the whole colony was infected. From En J:r'' "'. ^''' ^^^'^ ^^^"^ ^^«^«i«^^l wars with the English, and repeated attacks of the Iroquois the S' r^' *'^ ^^""*^^ ^^^« «-^ *^ - low eTbTwhUe feudal exactions, a ruinous system of monopolv and the StdTst f Tf r^^^ ^^"^^' eramped^^Vbr'an^h' eLernri!7'f m ' ^^ *^'' '"^^ ^* P"^«*« ^''^ th^ daring less a^dfnfi r ""'"'^'f '^^''''''^ ^^^^da, though sap^ less and infirm, spread forts and missions thr.n..h oii .L Z'T' Wilderness. Feebly rooted in the son,'"'3ie thm^t out branches which overshadowed half Amer^a ma J 38 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. fl « niflcent object to the eye, but one which the first whirl- wind would prostrate in the dust. Such excursive enterprise was alien to the genius of the British colonies. Daring activity was rife among them, but It did not aim at the founding of military outposts and forest missions. By the force of energetic mdustry, their population swelled with an unheard-of rapidity, their wealth increased in a yet greater ratio, and their promise of future greatness opened ^ith every advancing year^ But it was a greatness rather of peace than of war The free institutions, the independence of authority, which were the source of their increase, were adverse to that unity of counsel and promptitude of ac tion which are the soul of war. It was far otherwise with their military rival. France had her Canadian forces well m han^. They had but one will, and that was the will of a mistress. Now here, now there, in sharp and rapid onset, they could assail the cumbrous rnasses and unwieldy strength of their antegonists, as the king-bird attacks the eagle, or the swordfish tfie Whale. Between two such combatants the strife must needs be a long one. Canada was a true child of the Church, baptized in in- fency and faithful to the last. Champlain, the founder of Quebec, a man of noblfe spirit, a statesman and a soldier was deeply imbued ivith fervid piety. « The saving of a soul he would often say, "is worth more than the con- quest of an empire ; » and to forward the work of con- version, he brought with him four Franciscan monks from h ranee. At a later period, the task of colonization would have been abandoned, but for the hope of casting the pure Iti ^'*^ ''"'^'^ *^^ ^^^^™y ^^«^s of heathendom. All France was filled with the zeal of prosely tism. Men and women of exalted rank lent their countenance to the oS T/\ "^ n ^"^^""^ '-" ^^*^" ^^^y petitions were offered for the well-being of the mission ; and in the Holy ur.f ' IZ "\1'~. """^^"' "■ "■^" ^i^J proBcrace aay and night before the shrine, praying for the conversion of Canada. RELIGIOUS ZEAL OF CANADA. 89 In one convent, thirty nuns offered themselves for che abors of the wilderness ; and priests flocked in crowds to the colony. The powers of darkness took alarm; and when a ship, freighted with the apostles of the faith, was fearfully tempest-tost upon her voyage, the storm was as- cribed to the malice of demons, trembling for the safety of their ancient empire. ^ ^ T J^r^K^^T'''^ enthusiasm was not without its fruits. The Church could pay back with usury all that she re- ceived of aid and encouragement from the temporal power • and the ambition of Louis XIII. could not have devised a more efficient enginery for the accomplishment of its schemes, than that supplied by the zeal of the devoted propagandists. The priest and the soldier went hand in brstde'''' '''''''' ^""^ th^Jleurde lis were planted side Foremost among the envoys of the faith were the mem- bers oi that singula, order, who, in another hemisphere, had already done so much to turn back the advancing tide of religious freedom, and strengthen the arm of Rome. charL' ^„^7^*V^^« ^««ig«ed, '3r many years, the entire charge of the Canadian missions, to the exclusion of the i^ranciscans, early laborers in the same barren field In spired with a self-devoting zeal to snatch souls from per' clition, and win new empires to the cross ; casting from them every hope of earthly pleasure or earthly aggran- dizement, the Jesuit fathers buried themselves in deserts ftxcing death with the courage of heroes, and endunng to^: rTnW "" .^ *^' T'*^''"^ ^^ "^'^^*y^'«- Their stofy is replete with marvels-miracles of patient suffering and f^rJrn 1 '^^ ^^^"^ ^™^"^ *^^ ^^^^^^ forests Of Aca- nntn if^^ ^"^'''' suow-shocs, with somc Wandering Algon- qmn horde, or crouching in the crowded hunting-lodge naif stifled m the smoky den, and battling with troops ^^^^ famished dogs for the last morsel of «n«ln.. J ?lf: rTpirof^'m^^'f .r^^ wading"amo;;ihe X^ rapids of the Ottawa, toiling with his savage comrades to 40 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. It'' drag the canoe against the headlong water. Again, radi- ant in the vestments of his priestly office, he administer^ the siicramental bread to kneeling crowds of plumed and panited proselytes in the black forests of the Ilurons ; or beanng his life in his hand, he carries his sacred mission into the strongholds of the Iroquois, like a man who in- vades unarmed a den of angry tigers. Jesuit explorers traced the St. Lawrence to its source, and said masses among the solitudes of Lake Superior, where the boldest fur-trader scarcely dared to follow. They planted mis- sions at St. Mary's and at Michillimackinac ; and one of their fraternity, the illustrious Marquette, discovered the Mississippi, and opened a new theatre to the boundless ambition of France. The path of the missionary was a thorny and a bloody one ; and a life of weary apostleship was often crowned with a frightful martyrdom. Jean de Brebeuf and Ga- briel Lallemant preached the faith among the villages of the Hurons, when their terror-stricken flock were over- whelmed by an irruption of the Iroquois. The mission- aries might have fled ; but, true to their sacred function, they remained behind to aid the wounded and baptize the dying. Both were made captive, and both were doomed to the flery torture. Brebeuf, a veteran soldier of the cross, met his fate with an undaunted composure, which amazed his murderers. With unflinching constancy he endured torments too horrible to he recorded, and died calmly as a martyr of the early church, or a war-chief of the Mohawks. The slender frame of Lallemant, a man young in years and gentle in spirit, was enveloped in blazing savin-bark. Again and again the fire was extinguished; again and again it was kindled afresh ; and with such fiendish in- genuity were his torments protracted, that he lingered fo. seventeen hours before death came to his relief. Isaac Jogues, taken captive by the Iroquois, was led from cant/in to pnnfr^n onri iriii««.£i f^ „m _--i_-__. „ ----- , ^i^i.^.. TiiiagC to VlililgU, ciiuuriiig tresh torments and indignities at every stage of his prog- JESUIT MISSIONARIES. 41 I bloody 3rowne(l and Ga- lages of ?e over- nission- Linction, >tize the doomed of the which mcy he id died jhief of n years n-bark. in and Lish in- red fo- ms led duriiig s prog- ress. Men, women, and children vied with each other in ingenious malignity. Redeemed, at length, by the Immane exertions of a Dutch officer, he repaired to Franr where his disfigured person and mutilated hands told the story of his sufferings. But the promptings of a sleepless conscienc(; urged him to return and complete the work he had begun ; to illumine the moral darkness upon which, (luring the months of his disastrous captivity, he fondly hoped that he had thrown some rays of light. Once more he bent his footsteps towards the scene of his living mar- tyrdom, saddened with a deep presentiment that he was advancing to his death. Nor were his forebodings untrue. In a village of the Mohawks, the blow of a tomahawk closed his mission and his life. Such intrepid self-devotion may well call forth our highest admiration ; but when we seek for the results of these toils and sacrifices, we shall seek in vain. Patience and zeal were thrown away upon lethargic minds and stub- born hearts. The reports ol the Jesuits, it is true, display a copious list of conversions; but the zealous fathers reckoned the number of conversions by the number of baptisms ; and, as Le Clercq observes, with no less truth than candor, an Indian would be baptized ten times a day for a pint of brandy or pound of tobacco. Neither can more flattering conclusions be drawn from the alacrity which they showed to adorn their persons with crucifixes and medals. The glitter of the trinkets pleased the fancy of the warrior; and, with the emblem of man's salvation pendent from his neck, he was ofc" i at heart as thorough heathen as when he wore in its place a necklace made of the dried forefingers of his enemies. At the present day, with the exception of a few insignificant bands of converted Indians in Lower Canada, not a vestige of early Jesuit in- fluence can be found among the tribes. The seed was sown upon a rock. While the church was reaping but a scanty harvest, laomvQh of France. The Jwuit led the vau of French ,w 42 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. il colonization ; and at Detroit, Michillimackinac, St. Mary's, Green Bay, and other outposts of the west, the establish- ment of a mission was the precursor of military occu- pancy. In other respects no less, the labors of the wander- ing missionaries advanced the welfare of the colony Sagacious and keen of sight, with faculties stimulated by zeal and sharpened by peril, they made faithful report of the temper and movements of the distant tribes amon^ whom they were distributed. The influence which they often gained was exerted in behalf of the government under whose auspices their missions were carried on ; and they strenuously labored to win over the tribes to the French alliance, and alienate them from the heretic English In all things tliey approved themselves the stanch and steadfast auxiliaries of the imperial power ; and the Mar- quis du Quesne observed of the missionary Picquet, that m his single person he was worth ten regiments Among the English colonies, the pioneers of civili- zation were for the most part rude, yet vigorous men, impelled to enterprise by native restlessness, or lured by the hope of gain. Their range was limited, and seldom extended far beyond the outskirts of the settlemen , With Canada it was far otherwise. There was no energy in the bulk of her people. The court and the army sup- plied the main springs of lier vital action, and the hands which planted the lilies of France in the heart of the wilderness had never guided the ploughshare or wielded the spade. The love of adventure, .the ambition of new discovery, the hope of military advancement, urged men of place and culture to embark on bold and comprehensive enterprise. Many a gallant gentleman, many a nobleman of France trod the black mould and oozy mosses of the torest with feet that had pressed the carpets of Versailles They whose youth had passed in camps and courts grew gray among the wigwams of savages ; and the lives of iastine, Joncaire, and Priber* are invested with all ^he interest of mance. * For au account of Pdber, see Adair, 340. I have seen men- LA SALLE. 4a Conspicuous in the annals of Canada stands the mem- orable name of Robert Cavalier de La Salle, the man who, beyond all his compeers, contributed to expand the boun- dary of French empire in the west. La Salle commanded at Fort Frontenac, erected near the outlet of Lake Ontario, on its northern shore, and then forming the most advanced military outpost of the colony. Here he dwelt among Indians, and half-breeds, traders, voyageurs, bush-rangers, and Franciscan monks. He ruled his little empire with absolute sway, enforcing respect by his energy, but of- fending many by his rigor. Here he brooded upon the grand deign which had long engaged his thoughts. He had resolved to complete the achievement of Father Mar- quette, to trace the unknown Mississippi to its mouth, to plant the standard of his king in the newly-discovered regions, and found colonies which should make good the sovereignty of France from the Frozen Ocean to Mexico. Ten years of his early life had passed in connection with the Jesuits, and his strong mind had hardened to iron under the discipline of that relentless school. To a sound judgment, and a penetrating sagacity, he joined a bound- less enterprise and an adamantine constancy of purpose. But his nature was stern and austere ; he was prone to rule by fear rather than by love ; he took counsel of no man, and chilled all who approached him by his cold reserve. At the close of the year 1678, his preparations were complete, and he despatched his attendants to the banks oi i he River Niagara, whither he soon followed in person. Hero he erected a little fort of palisades, and was the first military tenant of a spot destined to momentous con- sequence in future wars. Two leagues above the cataract, on the western bank of the river, he built the first vessel which ever explored the waters of the upper lakes. Her name was the Griffin, and her burden was sixty tons. On tion of this man in contemporary provincial newspapers, where lie IS sometimes spoken of as a disguised Jesuit. Hs tnnk im }ns residence among the Cherokees about the year 1736, and labored to gain them over to the French interest. u THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. the seventh of August, 1679, she began her adventurous voyage amid the speechless wonder of the Indians, who stood amazed ahke at the unwonted size of the w^den . canoe at the flash and roar of the cannon from her decks and at the carved figure of a griffin, which, with expanded wmgs, sat crouched upon her prow. She bore on her course a ong the virgin waters of Lake Erie, through the beautiful wmdmgs of the Detroit, and among the restless b Hows of Lake Huron, where a furious tempest had well nigh mguifed her. La Salle pursued his voyage along Lake Michigan m birch canoes, and, after protracted suf iZZV^'''^ famine and exposure, reacheu its southern extremity on the eighteenth of October fhf t^^?^"' followers to the banks of the river now called the St. Joseph. Here, again, he built a fort ; and here, in after years, the Jesuits placed a mission and the govern- ment a garrison, l^hence he pushed on into the un- known region of the Illinois ; and now dangers and dif- ficutes began to thicken about him. Lidians threatened hostihty ; his men lost heart, clamored, grew mutinous and repeatedly deserted ; and, worse than all, nothing was heard of the vessel which had been sent back to Canada for necessary supplies. Weeks wore on, and doubt ripened into certainty. She had foundered among the storms of these wilderness oceans; and her loss seemed to involve the rum of the enterprise, since it was vain to proceed farther without the expected supplies. In this disastrous crisis. La Salle embraced a resolution eminentlv characteristic of his intrepid temper. Leaving his men m charge of a subordinate at a fort which he had b^Ut on the River Hlinois, he turned his face again towards Canada He traversed on foot twelve hundred miles of irozen forest, crossing rivers, toiling through snow-drifts wading ice-encumbered swamps, sustaining life by the truits of the chase, and threatened day and night bv lurk- ing enemies. He gained his destination, and it was only to ^encounter a fresh storm of calamities. His enemies nuu ueen ousy m iiis absence; a malicious report had gone LA SALLE. 45 abroad that he was dead; his creditors had seized his property ; and the stores on which he most relied had been wrecked at sea, or lost among the rapids of the St. Lawrence. Still he battled against adversity with his wonted vigor, and in Count Frontenac, the governor of the province, — a spirit kindred to his own, — he found a firm friend. Every difficulty gave way before him ; and with fresh supplies of men, stores, and ammunition, he again embarked for the Illinois. Rounding the vast cir- cuit of the lakes, he reached the mouth of the St. Joseph, and hastened with anxious speed to the fort where he had left his followers. The place was empty. Not a man remained. Terrified, despondent, and embroiled in Indian wars, they had fled to seek peace and safety, he knew not whither. Once more the dauntless discoverer turned back towards Canada. Once more he stood before Count Fron- tenac, and once more bent all his resources and all his credit to gain means for the prosecution of his enterprise. He succeeded. With his little flotilla of canoes, he left his fort, at the outlet of Lake Ontario, and slowly re- traced those interminable waters, and lines of forest- bounded shore, which had grown drearily familiar to his eyes. Fate at length seemed tired of the conflict with so stubborn an adversary. All went prosperously with the voyagers. They passed the lakes in safety ; they crossed the rough portage to the waters of the Illinois ; they fol- lowed its winding channel, and descended the turbid eddies of the Mississippi, received with various welcome by the scattered tribes who dwelt along its banks. Now the waters grew bitter to the taste ; now the trampling of the surf was heard ; and now the broad ocean opened upon their sight, and their goal was won. On the ninth of April, 1682, with his followers under arms, amid the firing of musketry, the chanting of the Te Deum, and shouts of « Vive le roi," La Salle took formal possession of the vast valley of the Mississippi, in the name of Louis the Great, King of France and Navarre. rif I 46 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. ' ul The first stage of his enterprise was accomplished, but labors no less arduous remained behind. Repairing to the court of France, he was welcomed with richly merited favor, and soon set sail for the mouth of the Mississippi, with :\ squadron of vessels amply freighted with men and material for the projected colony. But the folly and ob- stinacy of a worthless naval commander blighted his fairest hopes. The squadron missed the mouth of the river ; and the wreck of one of the vessels, and the deser- tion of the commander, completed the ruin of the expedi- tion. La Salle landed, with a band of half-famished fol- lowers, on the coast of Texas ; and while he was toiling with untired energy for their relief, a few vindictive mis- creants conspired against him, and a shot from a traitor's musket closed the career of the iron-hearted discoverer. It was left with another to complete the enterprise on which he had staked his life ; and, in the year 1699, Le- moine dTberville planted the germ whence sprang' the colony of Louisiana. Years passed on. In spite of a vicious plan of govern- ment, in spite of the bursting of the ever-memorable Mis- sissippi bubble, the new colony grew in wealth and strength. And now it remained for France to unite the two extremities of her broad American domain, to extend forts and settlements across the fertile solitudes between the valley of the St. Lawrence and the mouth of the Mis- sissippi, and intrench herself among the forests which lie west of the Alleghanies, before the swelling tide of Brit- ish colonization could overflow those mountain barriers. At the middle of the eighteenth century, he mighty pro- ject was fast advancing towards completion. The great lakes and streams, the thoroughfares of the wilderness, were seized and guarded by a series of posts distributed with admirable skill. A fort on the strait of Niagara commanded the great entrance to the whole interior country. Another at Detroit controlled the passage from Lake Erie to the north. Annth«r ni. Sf. MQT.^r'c, /i^^or.,.^^ all hostile access to Lake Superior. Another at Michilli- FRENCH POSTS IN THE WEST. 47 mackinac secured the mouth of Lake Michigan. A post at Green Bay, and one at St. Joseph, guarded the two routes to the Mississippi, by way of the Rivers Wisconsin and Illinois ; while two posts on the Wabash, and one on the Maumee, made France the mistress of the great trad- ing highway from Lake Erie to the Ohio. At Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and elsewhere in the Illinois, little French set- tlements had sprung up ; and as the canoe of the voyager descended the Mississippi, he saw, at rare intervals, along its swampy margm, a few small stockade forts, half buried amid the redundancy of forest vegetation, until, as he approached Natchez, the dwellings of the habitans of Louisiana began to appear. The forest posts of France were not exclusively of a military character. Adjacent to most of them, one would have found a little cluster of Canadian dwellings, whose tenants lived under the protection of the garrison, and obeyed the arbitrary will of the commandant ; an author- ity which, however, was seldom exerted in a despotic spirit. In these detached settlements, there was no prin- ciple of increase. The character of the people, and of the government which ruled them, were alike unfavor- able to it. Agriculture was neglected for the more con- genial pursuits of the fur trade, and the restless, roving Canadians, scattered abroad on their wild vocation, allied themselves to Indian women, and filled the woods with a mongrel race of bush-rangers. Thus far secure in the west, France next essayed to gain foothold upon the sources of the Ohio, and, about the year 1748, the sagacious Count Galissonniere proposed to bring over ten thousand peasants from France, and plant* them in the valley of that beautiful river, and on the borders of the lakes. But while at Quebec, in the Castle of St. Louis, soldiers and statesmen were revolv- ing schemes like this, the slowly-moving power of Eng- land bore on with silent progress from the east. Already the Mohawk, and ascending the eastern slopes of the Al- > T v: 48 THE COxNSPIRACY OP PONTIAC. leghanies. Forests crashing to the axe, dark sDire^ of smoke ascending from autumnal fires, we e heraJrof the ^th^L ^'^""Tl^ wa« burying plates of lead, engraved with the arms of France, the ploughs and axes of v'r o h r IZTr ^"' '"'^^^^"^ ' «-- «tle on the otner. The adverse powers were drawing near Th^ liour of collision was at hand. ^ ^^® CHAPTER HI. THE FRENCH, THE ENGLISH, AND THE INDIANS. The French colonists of Canada held, from the beffin nmg, a peculiar intimacy of relation with the Indian tribes. With the English colonists it was far otherwise • and the difference sprang from several causes The fur' trade was the life of Canada ; agriculture and commerce were the chief fountains of wealth to the British pro vinces. The Romish zealots of Canada burned for the conversion of the heathen ; their heretic rivals were fired with no such ardor. And finally, while the ambition of France grasped at empire over the farthest deserts of the west, the steady industry of the English colonist was contented to cultivate and improve a narrow strip of sea board. Thus it happened that the farmer of Massachu setts and the Virginian planter were conversant with only a few bordering tribes, while the priests and emis- saries of France were roaming the prairies with the buffalo hunting Pawnees, or lodging in the winter cabins of the j:>ahcotah ; and swarms of savages, whose uncouth names were strange to English ears, descended yearly from the north, to bring their beaver and otter skins to the market 01 Montreal. The position of Canada invited intercourse with the in tenor, and eminently favored her schemes of commerce and policy. The River St. Lawrence, and the chain of the great lakes, opened a vast extent of inland naviga- tion ; while their tributary streams, interlocking with the branches of the Mississippi, afforded ready access to that mighty river, and gave the restless voyager free range V.VCX liiiii tiie continent, jiut these advantages were well ^ 49 50 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. aia mgh neutralized. Nature opened the way, but a watch- ful and terrible enemy guarded the portal. The forests south of Lake Ontario gave harborage to the five tribes of the Iroquois, implacable foes of Canada. They waylaid her tradmg parties, routed her soldiers, murdered her missionaries, and spread havoc and woe through all her settlements. It was an evil hour for Canada, when, on the twentv- eighth of May, 1609, Samuel de Champlain, impelled by his own adventurous spirit, departed from the hamlet of (Quebec to follow a war-party of Algonquins against their hated enemy, the Iroquois. Ascending the Sorel and passing the rapids at Chambly, he embarked on the lake which bears his name, and, with two French attendants, steered southward, with his savage associates, toward the rocky promontory of Ticonderoga. They moved with all the precaution of Indian warfare ; when, at length as night was closing in, they descried a band of the Iroquois in their large canoes of elm bark approaching through the gloom. Wild yells from either ..de announced the mu- tual discovery. Both parties hastened to the shore, and all night long the forest resounded with their discordant war-songs and fierce whoops of defiance. Day dawned and the fight began. Bounding from tree to tree, the Iroquois pressed forward to the attack ; but when Cham- plain advanced from among the Algonquins, and stood full in sight before them, with his strange attire, his shin- ing breastplate, and features unlike their own ; when they saw the flash of his arquebuse, and beheld two of their chiefs fall dead, they could not contain their terror but fled for shelter into the depths of the wood. The Algon- quins pursued, slaying many m the flight, and the vic- tory was complete. Such was the first collision between the white men and the Iroquois ; and Champlain flattered himself that the latter had learned for the future to respect the arms of France. He was fatallv HppaiVp^ tii« t«^^.,^:^ ered from their terrors, but they never forgave the injury ; THE IROQUOIS-CHAMPLAIN. 61 and yet it would be unjust to charge upon Champlain the origin of the deso^ting wars which were soon to scourge the colony. The Indians of Canada, friends and neigh- bors of the French, had long been harassed by inroads of the fierce confederates, and under any circumstances the French must soon have become parties to the quarrel Whatever may have been its origin, the war was fruit- ful of misery to the youthful colony. The passes were beset by ambushed war-parties. The routes between Quebec and Montreal were watched with tigerlike vigi- lance. Bloodthirsty warriors prowled about the outskirts of the settlements. Again and again the miserable peo- pie, driven within the palisades of their forts, looked forth upon wasted harvests and blazing roofs. The Isl- and of Montreal was swept with fire and steel. The fur- trade was interrupted, since for months together all com- munication was cutoff with the friendly tribes of the west Agriculture was checked ; the fields lay fallow, and frequent famine was the necessary result. The name of the Iroquois became a by- word of horror through the colony, and to the suffering Canadians they seemed no better than troops of incarnate fiends. Revolting rites and monstrous superstitions were imputed to them ; and among the rest, it was currently believed that they cher- ished the custom of immolating young children, burning them with fire, and drinking the ashes mixed with water to increase their bravery. Yet the wildest imaginations could scarcely exceed the truth. At the attack of Mont- real, they placed infants over the embers, and forced the wretched mothers to turn the spit; and those who fell withm their clutches endured torments too hideous for description. Their ferocity was equalled only by their courage and address. At intervals, the afflicted colony found respite from its suffering ; and through the efforts of the Jesuits, fair hopes began to rise of prooitiatinff thft tprrihip ir^ a^ L^ time, the influence of the priests availed so far,' that ^! der their auspices a French colony was formed in the very li ; 52 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. heart of the rro(iuois country ; but the settlers were soon forced to a precipitate flight, and the war broke out afresh. The French, on their part, were not idle ; they faced their assailants with characteristic gallantry. Courcelles, Tracy, De la Barre, and De Nonville invaded by turns, with vari- ous success, the forest haunts of the confederates ; and at length, in the year 1696, the veteran Count Frontemu- marched upon their cantons with all the force of Canada. Stemming the surges of La Chine, sweeping through the romantic channels of the Thousand Islands, and over the glimmering surface of Lake Ontario, and, trailing in long array up the current of the Oswego, they disembarked on the margin of the Lake of Onondaga, and, startling the woodland echoes with the unwonted clangor of their trumpets, urged their perilous march through the mazes of the forest. Naver had those solitudes beheld so strange a pageantry. The Indian allies, naked to the waist and horribly painted, adorned with streaming scalp-locks and fluttering plumes, stole c hirg among the thickets, or peered with lynx-eyed visioxi through the labyrinths of foliage. Scouts and forest-rangers scoured the woods in front and flank of the marching columns — men trained among the hardships of the fur-trade, thin, sinewy, and strong arrayed in wild costume of beaded moccason, scarlet leggin, and frock of buckskin, fantastically garnished with many-colored embroidery of porcupine. Then came the levies of the colony, in gray capotes and gaudy sashes, and the trained battalions from old France in burnished cui- rass and head-piece, veterans of European wars. Plumed cavaliers were there, who had followed the standards of Conde or Turenne, and who, even in the depths of a wilderness, scorned to lay aside the martial foppery which bedecked the camp and court of Louis the Magnificent. The stern commander was borne along upon a litter in the midst, his locks bleached with years, but his eye kmdling with the quenchless fire which, like a furnace. u.ui vras aiiiiUDt spciiU illUS, li:! beneath the sepulchral arches of the forest, through TRIUMPHS OF THE FRENCH. 53 tangled thicket and over prostrate trunks, the aged nobleman advanced to wreak his vengeance upon emptv wigwams and deserted maize-flelds. Even the fierce courage of the Iroquois began to quail before these repeated attacks, while the gradual growth of the colony, and the arrival of troops from France at length convinced them that they could not destroy Can- ada. With the opening of the eighteenth century, their rancor showed signs of abating : and in the year 1726 by (hnt of skilful intrigue, the French succeeded in erecting a permanent military post at the important pass of Ni- Jigara, within the limits of the confederacy. Meanwhile m spite of every obstacle, the power of France had rapidly extended its boundaries in the west. French in- fluence diffused itself through a thousand channels, among distant tribes, hostile, for the most part, to the domineer- mg Iroquois. Forts, mission-houses, and armed trading stations secured the principal passes. Traders, and cou- reiirs cles bois pushed their adventurous traffic into the wildest deserts ; and French guns and hatchets, French beads and cloth, French tobacco and brandy, were known from where the stunted Esquimaux burrowed in their sno'., .aves, to where the Camanches scoured the plains ot the south with their banditti cavalry. Still this far- extended commerce continued to advance westward. In 17d8, La Verandrye essayed to reach those mysterious mountains which, as the Indians alleged, lay beyond the and deserts of the Missouri and the Saskatchawan. In- dian hostility defeated his enterprise, but not before he had struck far out into these unknown wilds, and formed a line of trading posts, one of which, Fort de la Reine ZnL^r^^\.?^ *^^ Assinniboin, a hundred leagues be- yond Lake Winnipeg. At that early period, France left ner footsteps upon the dreary wastes which even now have no other tenants than the Indian buffalo-hunter or the roving trapper. feeble rivalry to that of their hereditary foes. At an 1^ ■^T P P ! 1 J i }| ^. i *" i 64 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. • early period, favored by the friendship of the Iroquois, they attempted to open a traffic witli the Algonquin tribes of the great lakes ; and in the year 1687, Major, McGregory ascended with a boat-load of goods to Lake Huron, where his appearance excited great commotion, and where he was promptly seized and imprisoned by a party of the French. From this time forward, Uie Eng- lish fur- trade languished, until the year 1725, when (Gov- ernor Burnet, of New York, established a post on Lake Ontario, at the mouth of the River Oswego, wMther, lured by the cheapness and excellence of the English goods, crowds of savages soon congregated from every side, to the unspeakable annoyance of the French. Meanwhile, a considerable commerce was springing up with the Cherokees and other tribes of the south ; and during the first hal/ of the century, the people of Pennsyl- vania began to cross the Alleghanies, and carry on a lucrative traffic with the tribes of the Ohio. In 1749, La Jonquiere, the governor of Canada, learned, to his great indignation, that several English traders had reached Sandusky, and were exerting a bad influence upon the Indians of that quarter ; and two years later, he caused four of the intruders to be seized near the Ohio, and sent prisoners to Canada. These early efforts of the English, considerable as they were, can ill bear comparison with the vast extent of the French interior commerce. In respect also to missionary enterprise, and the political influence resulting from it, the French had every advantage over rivals whose zeal for conversion was neither kindled by fanaticism nor fostered by an ambitious government. Eliot labored within call of Boston, while the heroic Brebeuf faced the ghastly perils of the western wilderness ; and the wander- ings of Brainerd sink into insignificance compared with those of the devoted Rasles. Yet, in judging the relative merits of the Romish and Protestant missionaries, it must not be forgotten that while the former contented them- selves with sprinkling a few drops of water on the fore- THE ENGLISH AND THE IROQITOIS. 55 head of the warlike proselyte, tho latter sought to wean him from his barbarism, and penetrate his savage heart with the truths of Christianity. In respect, also, to direct political influence, the ad- vantage was wholly on the side of France. The English colonies, broken into separate governments, were incapa- ble of exercising a vigorous and consistent Indian policy ; and the measures of one government often clashed with those of another. Even in the separate provinces, the popular nature of the constitution and the quarrels of governors and assemblies were unfavorable to efficient action ; and thi« was more especially the case in the prov- ince of New York, where the vicinity of the Iroquois rendered strenuous yet prudent measures of the utmost importance. The powerful confederates, hating the French with bitter enmity, naturally inclined to the English alliance; and a proper treatment would have secured their firm and lasting friendship. But, at the early periods of her history, the assembly of New York was made up in great measure of narrow minded men, more eager to consult their own petty immediate interests than to pursue any far-sighted scheme of public welfare. Other causes conspired to injure the British interest iri this quarter. The annual present sent from England to the Iroquois was often embezzled by corrupt governors or their favorites. The proud chiefs were disgusted by the cold and haughty bearing of the English officials, and a pernicious custom prevailed of conducting Indian ne- gotiations through lie i medium of the fur- traders, a class of men held in conic pt by the Iroquois, and known among them by the significant title of " rum-carriers." In short, through all the counsels of the province, Indian aifairs were grossly and madly neglected. With more or less emphasis, the sama remark holds true of all the other English colonies. With those of France, it was far otherwise; and this difference between the rival powers was naturally incident to their different forms of government, and different conditions of develop- m 66 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. nient. France labored with eager diligence to conciliate the Indians and win them to espouse her cause. Her agents were busy in every viPage, studying the language of the inmates, complying with their usages, flattering their prejudices, caressing them, cajoling them, and whispering friendly warnings in their ears against the wicked designs of the English. When a party of Indian chiefs visited a French fort, they were greeted with the firing of cannon and rolling of drums ; they were regaled at the tables of the officers, and bribed with medals and decorations, scarlet uniforms and French flags. Far wiser than their rivals, the French never ruffled the self- jom- pJ -, dignity of their guests, never insulted their re- ligious notions, nor ridiculed their ancient customs. They met the savage half-waj , and showed an abundant read- iness to mould their own features after his likeness. Count Frontenac himself, plumed and painted like an In- dian chief, danced the war-dance and yelled the war-song at the camp-fires of his delighted allies. 1 . would have been well had the French been less exact in their im- itations, for at times they copied their model with in- famous fidelity, and fell into excesses scarcely credible but for the concurrent testimony of their own writers. F ntenac caused an Iroquois prisoner to be burnt alive to strike terror into his countrymen; and Louvigny, French commandant at Michillimackinac, in 1695, tortured an Iroquois ambassador to death, that he might break off a negotiation between that people knd the Wyandots.* Nor are these the only well attested instances of each ex- ecrable inhumanity. But if the French were guilty of these cruelties against their Indian enemies, they were * La Hontan, I. 177. Potheiie, Hist. Am. Sept. II. 298, (Paris, 1722.) 'V » These facts afford no ground for national reflections when it is recollected that while Iroquois prisoners were tortured in the wilds of Canada, Elizabeth Gaunt was burned to dea+h at Ty- to a political offwder, » ^ ^ AMALGAMATION OF FRENCH AND INDIANS. 57 no less guilty of unworthy compliance with the demands of their Indian friends, in cases where Chr stianity and civilization would have dictated a prompt refusal. Even the brave Montcalm stained his bright name by aban- doning the hapless defenders of Oswego and William Henry to the tender mercies of an Indian mob. In general, however, the Indian policy of the French cannot be charged v/ith obsequiousness. Complaisance was tempered with dignity. At an early period, they disc ned the peculiarities of the native character, and clearly saw that, while, on the one hand, it was neces- sary to avoid giving offence, it was not less necessary, on the other, to assume a bold demeanor and a show of power ; to caress with one hand, and grasp a drawn sword with the other. Every crime against a Frenchman was promptly chastised by the sharp agency of military law ; while among the English, the offender could only be reached through the medium of the civil C( nrts, whose de- lays, uncertainties, and evasions excited the wonder and provoked the contempt of the Indians. It was by observance of the course indicated above— a course highly judicious in a political point of view, what- ever it may have been to the eye of the moralist— that the French were enabled to maintain themselves in small detached posts, far aloof from the parent colony and en- vironed by barbarous tribes, where an English garrison would have been cut off in a twelvemonth. They pro- fessed to hold these posts, not in their own right, but purely through the grace and condescension of the sur- rounding savages; and by this conciliating assurance they sought to make good their position, until, with their « growing strength, conciliation should no more be needed. In its efforts to win the friendship and alliance of the Indian tribes, the French government found every advantage in the peculiar chnracter or its subjects— that pliant and plastic temper which fi. vms so marked a con- trast to the stubborn spirit of the Englishman. From the beginning, the French showed a tendency to amal- i } 68 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. M m Ti 1 'If Jihi! m gamato with the forest tribes. "The manners of the savages," writes the Baron La Hontan, "are perfectly agreeable to my palate ; " and many a restless adventurer, of high or low degree, might have echoed the words of the erratic soldier. At first, great hopbs were entertained that, by the mingling of French and Indians, the latter would be won over to civilization and the church ; but the effect was precisely the reverse; for, as Charlevoix observes, the savages did not become French, but the French became savages. Hundreds betook themselves to the forest, never more to return. These outflowings of French civilization were merged in the waste of bar- barism, as a river is lost in the sands of the desert. The wandering Frenchman chose a wife or a concubine among his \ idian friends ; and, in a few generations, scarcelv a tribe of the west was free from an infusion of Celtic blood. The French empire in America could exhibit among its subjects every shade of color from white to red, every gradation of culture from the highest civ- ilization of Paris to the rudest barbarism of the wig- wam. The fur-trade engendered a peculiar class of men known by the appropriate name of bush-rangers, or coureurs des hois, half-civilized vagrants, whose chief vocation was conducting the canoes of the traders along the lakes and rivers of the interior : many of them, however, shaking loose every tie of blood and kindred, identified themselves with the Indians, and sank into utter barbarism. In many a squalid camp among the plains and forests of the west, the traveller would have encountered men owning the blood and speaking the language of France, yet, m their wild and swarthy visages and barbarous costume, seeming more akin to those with whom they had cast their lot. The renegade of civilization caught the habits and imbibed the prejudices of his chosen associates. He loved to decorate his long hair with eagle feathers, to make his fap.fi hidfinHH wifh vormilirwn ni^\\-no. or^rl c^^^i- ^^A - _ ,,i.,,,,„. vj~^iij.v, ciii->_i ouui;, aiiu. to adorn his greasy hunting frock with horse-hair fringes. ENGLISH FUR-TRADERS. 59 His dwelling, if he had one, was a wigwam. He lounged on a bear-skin while his squaw boiled his venison and lighted his pipe. In hunting, in dancing, in singing, in taking a scalp, he rivalled the genuine Indian. His mind was tinctured with the superstitions of the forest. He had faith in the magic drum of the conjurer ; he was not ^ure that a thunder cloud could not be frightened away by whistling at it through the wing bone of an eagle ; he carried the tail of a rattlesnake in his bullet pouch by way of amulet ; and he placed implicit trust in the pro- phetic truth of his dreams. This class of men is not yet extinct. In the cheerless wilds beyond the northern lakes, or among the mountain solitudes of the distant west, they may still be found, unchanged in life and character since the day when Louis the Great claimed sovereignty over this desert empire. The borders of the English colonies displayed no such phenomena of mingling races ; for here a thorny and im- practicable barrier divided the white man from the red. The English fur-traders, and the rude men in their em- ploy, showed, it is true, an ampl« alacrity to fling off the restraints of civilization; but though they became bar- barians, they did not become Indians ; and scorn on the one side, and hatred on the other, still marked the in- tercourse of the hostile races. With the settlers of the frontier it was much the same. Rude, fierce, and con- temptuous, they daily encroached upon the hunting- grounds of the Indians, and then paid them for the injury with abuse and insult, curses and threats. Thus the native population shrank back from before the English, as from before an ad^^ancing pestilence; while, on the other hand, in the very heart of Canada, Indian com- munities sprang up, cherished by the government, and favored by the easy-tempered people. At Lorette, at Caughnawaga, at St. Francis, and elsewhere withm the province, large bands were gathered together, consisting in part of fugitives from the borders of the hated Eng- Ush, and aiding, in time of war, to swell the forces of I • ; t- \ t { t 60 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. the French in repeated forays against the settlements of JNew York and New England. There was one of the English provinces marked out from among its brethren by the peculiar character of its founders, and by the course of conduct which was there pursued towards the Indian tribes. William Penn his mind warmed with a broad philanthropy, and enlightened by liberal views of human government and human rights planted on the banks of the Delaware the colony which' vivified by the principles it embodied, grew, with a mar- vellous rapidity, into the great commonwealth of Pennsyl- vania. Penn's treatment of the Indians was equally pru- dent and humane, and its results were of high advantage to the colony ; but these results have been exaggerated and the treatment which produced them made the theme of inordinate praisp. It required no great benevolence to urge the Quakers to deal kindly with their savage neigh- J)ors. They were bound in common sense to propitiate them; since, by incurring their resentment, they would involve themselves in the dilemma of submitting their necks to the tomahawk, or wielding the carnal weapon, m glaring defiance of their pacific principles. In paying the Indians for the lands Avhich his colonists occupied,— a piece of justice which has been greeted with a general clamor of applause,— Penn, as he himself confesses, acted on the prudent counsel of Compton, Bishop of London Nor IS there any truth in the representations of Raynal and other eulogists of the Quaker ^legislator, who hold him up to the world as the only European who ever ac- quired the Indian lands by purchase, instep/i of seizing them by fraud or violence. The example of purchase had been set fifty years before by the Puritans of New England ; and several of the other colonies had more recently pursued the same just and prudent course. With regard to the alleged results of the pacific con- duct of the Quakers, our admiration will diminish on closely viewing the circumstances of the case= The posu tion of the colony was a most fortunate one. HadShe THE QUAKERS AND THE INDIANS. 61 Quakers planted their settlement on the banks of the St. Lawrence, or among the warlike tribes of New England, it may well be doubted whether their shaking of hands- . and assurances of tender regard would long have availed to save them from the visitations of the scalping-knife. But the Delawares, the people on whose territory their colony was planted, were, like themselves, debarred the use of arms. The Iroquois had conquered them, and re- duced them to abject submission, wringing from them a yearly tribute, disarming them, forcing them to adopt the opprobrious name of women, and forego the right of war. The humbled Delawares were but too happy to receive the hand extended to them, and dwell in friendship with their pacific neighbors ; since to have lifted the hatchet would have brought upon their heads the vengeance of their conquerers, whose good will Penn had taken pains . to secure.* The sons of Penn, his successors in the proprietor- ship of the province, did not evince the same kindly feel- ing towards the Indians which had distinguished their father. Earnest to acquire new lands, they commenced, through their agents, a series of unjust measures, which gradually alienated the attachment of the Indians, and, after a peace of seventy years, produced a most disastrous rupture. The Quaker population of the colony sympa- thized in the kindness which its founder had cherished towards the benighted race. This feelmg was strengthened by years of friendly intercourse ; and except where private interest was concerned, the Quakers made good their reiterated professions of attachment. Kind- ness to the Indian was the glory of their sect. As years wore on, this feeling was wonderfully reenforced by the influence of party spirit. The time arrived when alienated by English encroachment on the one hand and French seduction on the other, the Indians began to *He paid twice for his lands? onno fr* fVio Tr««««i<, claimed them by right of conquest, and once to their occupants, the Delawares. I 62 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. assume a threatening attitude towards the province ; and many voices urged the necessity of a resort to arms. This measure, repugnant alike to their pacific principles and to their love of the Indians, was strenuously opposed by the Quakers. Their affection for the injured race was now inflamed into a sort of benevolent fanaticism. The more rabid of the sect would scarcely confess that an Indian could ever do wrong. In their view, he was always sinned against, always the innocent victim of injury and abuse ; and in the days of the final rup are, when the woods were full of furious war-parties, and the German and Irish settlers on the frontier were butchereu by hundreds, when the western sky was darkened with the smoke of buring settlements, and the wretched fugi- tives were flying in crowds across the Susquehanna, a large party among the Quakers, secure by their Philadel- phia firesides, could not see the necessity of waging even a defensive war against their favorite people. The encroachments on the part of the proprietors, which have been alluded to above, and which many of the Quakers viewed with disapproval, consisted in the fraudulent interpretation of Indian deeds of conveyance, and in the granting out of lands without any conveyance at all. The most notorious of these transactions, and the one most lamentable in its results, was commenced in the year 1737, and known by the name oi the walking pur- chase. An old, forgotten deed was raked out of the dust of the previous century, a deed which was in itself of doubtful validity, and which, moreover, had been virtually cancelled by a subs'^ouent agreement. On this rotten title the proprietors laid claim to a valuable tract of land on the right bank of the Delaware. Its western boundary was to be defined by a line drawn from a certain point on Neshaminey Creek, in a north-westerly direction, as far as a man could walk in a day and a half. From the end of the walk, a line drawn eastward to the River Delaware was to form the northern limit of the purchase. The proprietors sought out the most active men who TYRANNY OF THE IROQUOIS. 63 conld be heard of, and put them in training for the walk ; at the same time laying out a smooth road along the in- tended couice, that no obstructions might mar their speed. By this means an incredible distance was accomplished within the limited time. And now it only remained to adjust the northern boundary. Instead of running the line directly to the Delaware, according to the evident meaning of the deed, the proprietors inclined it so far to the north as to form an acute angle with the river, and enclose many hundred thousand acres of valuable land, which would otherwise have remained in the hands of the Indians. The land thus infamously obtained lay in the Forks of the Delaware, above Easton, and was then occupied by a powerful branch of the Dela wares, who, to their unspeakable amazement, now heard the summons to quit forever their populous village and fields of half- grown maize. In rage and distress they refused to obey, and the proprietors were in a perplexing dilemma. Force was necessary; but a Quaker legislature would never consent to fight, and especially to fight against Indians. An expedient was hit upon, at once safe and effectual. The Iroquois were sent for. A deputation of their chiefs appeared at Philadelphia, and having been well bribed, and deceived by false accounts of the transaction, they consented to remove the refractory Delawares. The de- linquents were summoned before their conquerors, and the Iroquois orator, Canassatego, a man of noble stature and imposing presence, looking with a grim countenance on his cowering auditors, addressed them in the following words : — « You ought to be taken by the hair of the head and shaken soundly till you recover your senses. You don't know what you are doing. Our brother Onas' * cause is very just. On the other hand, your cause is bad, and you are bent to break the chain of friendship. How came you to take upon you to sell land at all ? We conquered * Onas was thft and his successors. nciTviA rifyrmirt V\wv 4>1«a T- __ . Ji. i t r n •i a I" 1 64 THE CONSPIRACY OP PONTIAC. you ; we made women of you ; you know you are women andean no more sell land than women. This land you with clothes, meat, and drink, by the goods paid you for ^and now you want it again, like children as you are. What makes you sell land in the dark? Did you ever teU us you had sold this land ? Did we ever receive any pait,even the value of a pipe-shank, from you for it? We charge you to remove instantly ; we don't dive vou the advice of a wise man, and remove immediately You may return to the other side of Delaware, where you hrvrh' '"'/' "" r ''""^ ^""'^ -"''Bering mXff .^'''^^ ^'"^"'"* y«"'-««l^««. you will be pert tw . H i *'™' "■ *''"'•'<'■• y°" •'"^^ not swallowed tlxat land down your throats as well as the land on this side^ We therefore ^assign you two places to go, either to Wyoming or Shamokin. We shaJl then have you more under our eye, and shall see how you behave. DonW hteraH but take this belt of wampum, and go at once^' The unhappy Delawares dared not disobey this arbi- trary mandate. They left their ancient homes, and ri moved, as they had been ordered, to the Susquehan^t where some settled at Shamokin, and some at WyoZg From an early period, the Indians had been annoZ by in 1728, they had bitterly complained of the wrong The man and Irish, began to cross the Susquehanna and buUd their cabms along the valleys of the Juniata and its tribu tary waters. The Delawares sent frequent remonstrlnc"; from their new abodes, and the Iroquois themselve made angry complaints, declaring that the lands of the JuZta were theirs by right of conquest, and that they had give^ them to their cousms, the Delawares, for hunting-grounds Some efforts at redress were made; but the^emedv proved ineffectual, and the discontent of the Mans f/ _x , ..._ ,^,r^. ^^^,.^ ^^g enawanoes, with many of POLICY OF THE FRENCH. 66 )j the Delawares, removed westward, where, for a time, they would be safe from intrusion ; and by the middle of the century, the Delaware tribe were separated into two divisions, one of which remained upon the Susquehanna, while the other, in conjunction with the Shawanoes, dwelt on the waters of the Alleghany and the Muskingum. But now the French began to push their advanced posts into the valley of the Ohio. Most unhappily for the English interest, they found the irritated minds of the Indians in a state which favored their efforts at seduc- tion, and held forth a flattering promise that tribes so long faithful to the English might soon be won over to espouse the cause of France. While the English interests wore so inauspicious an aspect in this quarter, their prospects were not much better among the Iroquois. Since the peace of Utrecht, in 1713, these powerful tribes had so far forgotten their old malevolence against the French, that the latter were enabled to bring all their machinery of conciliation to bear upon them. They turned the opportunity to such good account as not only to smooth away the asperity of their ancient foes, but also to rouse in their minds a growing jealousy against the English. Several accidental circumstances did much to aggravate this feeling. The Iroquois were in the habit of sending out frequent war- parties against their enemies, the Cherokees and Catawbas who dwelt near the borders of Carolina and Virginia ; and in these forays the invaders often became so seriously embroiled with the white settlers, that sharp frays took place, and an open war seemed likely to ensue. It was with great difficulty that the irritation of these untoward accidents was allayed ; and even then enough still remained in the neglect of governments, the insults of traders, and the haughty bearing of officials, to disgust the proud confederates with their English allies. In the ^^j" f ^'^'^^^ *hey yielded but cold and doubtful aid; and fears were entertained of their final estrangement. This result became still more imminent, when, in the 5 ipw 66 III: hmw THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. urn year 1749, the French priest Picquet established his imssion ui La Presentation on the St. Lawrence, at the site of Ogdensburg. This pious father, like the martial churchmen of an earlier day, deemed it no scandal to ' grd on earthly armor against the enemies of the faith He built a fort and founded a settlement ; he mustered the Indians about him from far and near, organized their governments, and marshaled their war-parties. From .he crenelled walls of his mission-house the warlike apostle could look forth upon a military colony of his own creating, upon farms and clearings, white Canadian cabins, and the bark lodges of many an Indian horde which he had gathered under his protecting wing. A chief object of the settlement was to form a barrier against the English; but the purpose dearest to the missionary's heart was to gain over the Iroquois to the side of France • and in this he succefeded so well, that, as a writer of good authority declares, the number of their warriors within the circle of his influence surpassed the whole remaining force of the confederacy. * Thoughtful men in the English colonies saw with anxiety the growing defection of the Iroquois, and dreaded lest, in the event of a war with France, her ancient foes might now be found her friends. But in this ominous conjecture, one strong influence was at work to bind the confederates to their old alliance ; and this influence was wielded by a man so remarkable in his character and so conspicuous an actor in the SQenes of the ensuing history, as to demand at least some passing notice About the year 1734, in consequence, it is said* of the hapless issue of a love affair, William Johnson, a young Irishman, came over to America at the age of nineteen where he assumed the charge of an extensive tract of wild land m the province of New York, belonging to his Tl^' d^f '""^^ ^''* ^'^'' ^^^^*^^- S^^^ling in the valley ot the Mohawk, he carried on a prosperous trafiic with the Indiansj and while he rapidly rose to wealth, he gaineu, at the same time, an extraordinary influence over SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON. 67 the neighboring Iroquois. As his resources increased, he built two mansions in the valley, known respectively by tne names of Johnson Castle and Johnson Hall, the latter of which, a well-constructed building of wood and stone, is still standing ii) the village of Jonnstown. Johnson Castle was situated at some distance higher up the river. Both were fortified against attack, and the latter was surrounded with cabins built for the reception of the Indians, who often came in crowds to visit the proprietor, invading his dwelling at all unseasonable hours, loitering in the doorways, spreading their blankets in the passages, and infecting the air with the fumes of stale tobacco. Johnson supplied the place of his former love by a young Dutch damsel, who bore him several children; and, in justice to the latter, he married her upon her death-bed. Soon afterwards he found another favorite in the person of Molly Brant, sister of the celebrated Mohawk war-chief, whose black eyes and laughing face caught his fancy, as, fluttering with ribbons, she galloped past him at a muster of the Tryon County militia. Johnson's importance became so conspicuous, that when the French war broke out in 1755, he v/as made a major- general ; and soon after, the colonial troops under his com- mand gained the battle of Lake George against the French forces of Baron Dieskau. For this success, for which, however, the commander was entitled to little credit, he was raised to the rank of baror.et, and rewarded with the gift of five thousand pounds from the king. About this time, he was appointed superintendent of Indian affairs for the northern tribes, a station in which he did signal service to the country. In 1769, when General Prideaux was killed by the bursting of a cohorn in the trenches be- fore Niagara, Johnson succeeded to his command, routed the French in another pitched battle, and soon raised the red cross of England on the conquered rampart of the fort. After the peace of 1763, he lived for many years at «;ohn3on Kail, constantly enriched by the increasing value of his vast estate, and surrounded by a hardy Highland 68 THE CONSPIRACV OF PONTIAC. tenantry, devoted to his interests ; but when the tempest winch had long been brewing seemed at length about to break, and signs o{ a speedy rupture with the mothor country thickened with every day, be stood wavering i'. an agony of mdecision, divided between his loyalty to tha sovereign who was the source of all his honors, and Ms reluctance to become the agent of a murderous Indir • warfare against his countrymen and friends. His final resolution was never taken. In the summer of 1774 he was attacked with a sudden illness, and died within a tew hours, in the sixtieth year of his age, hurried to his ofTs oL"w'"*"^'^ "^' " '"'"'^ '^''^^^' ^y *'•« -' Nature had well fitted him for the position in which , his propitious stars had cast his lot. His person was fe,ll, erect, and strong; hi, features grave and manly. His direct and upright dealings, his courage, eloquence, and . address were sure passports to favor in Indian eyes. He had a singular facility of adaptation. In the camp, or at the council-board, in spite of his defective educatbn, he bore himself as became his station ; but at home he wa! seen drinking flip and smoking tobacco with the Duteh boors, his neighbors, talking of improvements or the price ot ueaver-skins; and in the Indian villages he would feast on dog's flesh dance with the warriors, and haraCehs sachem. His temper was genial ; he encouraged rustic Ss ^"^ ''^^^'^ '"'* •^'"^"•^ "^^^ ^y ^^^^^ ""1 d.wf'^'*"'"'''.' '• '"''^''''^'■' '^''"■^ ^"°y««'"j«^w*-ui'KCiierai 01 me Vir- ginian militia. 72 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. Washington departed on his mission, crossed the moun- tains, descended to the bleak and leafless valley of the Ohio, and thence continued his journey up the banks of the Alleghany until the fourth of December. On that day he reached Venango, an Indian town on the Alle- ghany, at the mouth of French Creek. Here was the ad- vanced post of the French, and here, among the Indian log-cabins and huts of bark, he saw their flag flying above the house of an English trader, whom the military in- truders had unceremoniously ejected. They gave the young envoy a hospitable reception,* and referred him to the commanding officer, whose headquarters were at Le Bceuf, a fort which they had just erected on French Creek, some distance above Venango. Thither Washington repaired, and on his arrival was received with stately courtesy by the oflgcer Legardeur de St. Pierre, whom he describes as an elderly gentleman of very soldier-like appearance. To the message of Dinwiddle, St. Pierre replied that he would forward it to the governor-general of Canada ; but that, in the mean time, his orders were to hold possession of the country, and this he should do to the best of his ability. With this answer Washington, through all the rigors of the midwinter forest, retraced his steps, with one attendant, to the English borders. With the first opening of spring, a newly-raised com- pany of Virginian backwoodsmen, under Captain Trent, *"He invited us to sup with them, .and treated us with the greatest complaisance. The wine, as they dosed themselves pretty plentifnlly with it, soon banished the restraint wh ch at first appeared in their conversation, and gave a license t > their tongues to reveal their sentiments more freely. I'hey toid nit. that it was their absolute design to take possession of the Ohio, and by G—d they would do it ; for that, although tin , w-ere sen- sible the English could raise two men for theii c , vet tl; 'y knew their motions were too slow and dilatory to iy:i. v-en- any undertaking of theirs. They pretend to have an .jn ioubted vight to the river from a discovery made by one La Salle, sirtj ye^rs ago ; and the rise of this expedition is, to \> event our fettling on the river or waters of it, as they heard of some families mov- ing out in order thereto."— Washington, Journal. DEATH OF JUMONVILLE. 7, ha-stened across the mountains and began to build a fort at tlie confluence of the Monongahela and Alleehanv where P.ttsburg now stands ; when suddenly they found themselves invested by a host of French and Indian, who with sixty bateaux and three hundred caaoes, had de- scended from Le Boeuf and Venango. The English were rl^rthfv Xrd'^tf '^ '^'' '""'' "^^'"^ quite'unabret resist, they obeyed the summons, and withdrew in great discorafiture towards Virginia. Meanwhile WashinS r hn'^^d ""'X "^ '^^"kwoodsmen, was advandngfrom the borders ; and hearing of Trent's disaster, he resolveu to fortify himself on the Monong«heu^ aAd hold Ms poHMm ^Thf ;• ™'l! '"^"^ *^°°P^ "<™'^ arrive to su^! port him. The French sent out a scouthig pavtv undrr M. Jumonville with the design, rrobably, of watching his burpnsed them, as they lay lurking m a roclcy glen not far from his camp, killed the officer, and captured thl whole detachment. Learning that tke L„?h e^t ^d by tfcs reverse, were about to attack him in grkat fof 4 he thought It prudent to fall back, and retired fccord ngly to a spot called the Great Meadows, where he had before hrown up a slight intrenchment. Here he found iTm! self furiously assailed by nine hundred French and In dians, commanded by a brother .f the slain Jumonvi le" From eleven m the morning till eight at night, the back woodsmen, who ,vere half f..mished f rom ^the faflure of I'lhin^hTi?'"*^'' "" ^'"^^'•™ defence, some 5«ng within the mtrenehment, and some on the plain without forms' 'Z7' "" '''"'* ''■'^'' '^ P-' ''' ""d terms Ihey wre ace , ed, and on the following dav Washington and his men retired across the mZlrnT French' "'""" *''^'*°'^ remained in the hands of the prize which belonged to neither of them, the unhanpv Indians saw, with a- ,m and amazement, heir lands be winmg a bone «f contention between rapacious st" nit 74 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. The first appearance of the French on the Ohio excited the wildest fears in the tribes of that quarter, among whom were those who, disgusted by the encroachments of the Pennsylvanians, had fled to these remote retreats to escape the intrusions of the white men. Scarcely was their fancied asylum gained, when they saw themselves invaded by a host of armed men from Canada. Thus placed be- tween two fires, they knew not which way to turn. There was no union in their counsels, and they seemed like a mob of bewildered children. Their native jealousy was roused to its utmost pitch. Many of them thought that the two white nations had conspii-ed to destroy them, and then divide their lands. " You and the French," said one of them, a few years afterwards, to an English emis- sary, " are like the two edges of a pair of shears, and we are the cloth which is cut to pieces between them." The French labored hard to conciliate them, plying them with gifts and flatteries, * and proclaiming them- selves their champions against the English. At first, these arts seemed in vain, but their effect soon began to declare itself ; and this effect was greatly increased by a singular piece of infatuation on the part of the proprietors of Pennsylvania. During the summer of 1754, delegates of the several provinces met at Albany, in order to con- cert measures of defence in the war which now seemed inevitable. It was at this meeting that the memorable plan of a union of the colonies was brought upon the carpet ; a plan, the fate of which wa^ curious and signi- ficant, for the crown rejected it as giving too much power * Letters of Robert Stobo, an English hostage at Fort du Quesne. " Shamokin Daniel, wlio came with me, went over to i«ie fort [du Quesne] by himself, and counselled with the governor, who presented him with a laced coat and hat, a blanket, shirts, ribbons a new gun, powder, lead, &c. When he returned, he was quite changed, and said, ' See here, you fools, what the 1^'rench have given me, I was in Philadelphia, and never received a farthing ; ' and (directing himself to me) said, ' The English ar© fools, and §o are you,' "— Post, First jGumal, FRENCH AND ENGLISH DIPLOMACY. 75 to the people and the people as giving too much power to the crown A councU was also held with the Iroquois Tent toTh. *«y T«*7'>'i but lukewarm in their atUh^ ment to the English, a treaty of friendship and aUiance was concluded with their deputies.* It would have tem rapacity, the proprietary agents of Pennsylvania took advantage of this great assemh' -e of sachemVto proc^e Zbtrhvr""'''!'^''"" ^ts, including the Lds mhabited by the very tribes w, ,he French were nt that- moment striving to seduce. When they heard ZC^^th out their consent, their conquerors and tyrants, the Iro- quois, had sold the soil from beneath their feet, thdr i^dig- limit to English encroachment, many of them from that hour became fast allies of the Trench a Ik,lnw? ."'i ^°"* troops under 6^ uieskau, aj) officer who had distinguished himself in the campaigns of Marshal Saxe. The English fleet gl^u' destination, and landed its troops m sf fety. Thfprench were less fortunate. Two of their ships, the Lys and the ft^lnd'"""^""?''''^ *« ^"^^ "« *e banks Xw! fomidland; and when the weather cleared, thev found themselves under the guns of a superior BritSh force! 76 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. J ¥»■ belonging to the squadron of Admiral Boscawen, sent out for the express purpose of intercepting them. « Are we at peace or war ? " demanded the French commander. A broadside from the Englishman soon solved his doubts, and, after a stout resistance, the French struck their colors. News of the capture caused great excitement in England, but the conduct of the aggressors was generally approved of ; and under pretence that the French had begun the war by their alleged encroachments in America, orders were issued for a general attack upon their marine. So successful were the British cruisers, that, before the end of the year, three hundred French vessels, and nearly eight thousand sailors, were captured and brought into port.* The French, unable to retort in kind, raised an outcry of indignation, and Mirepoix, their ambassador, withdrew from the court of London. Thus began that memorable war which, kindling among the wild forests of America, scattered its fires over the kingdoms of Europe, and the sultry empire of the Great Mogul ; the war made glorious by t!ie heroic death of Wolfe, the victories of Frederic, and the marvellous ex- ploits of Clive ; the war which controlled the destinies of America, and was first in the chain of events which led on to her revolution, with all its vast and undeveloped consequences. On the old battle-ground of Europe, the struggle bore the same familiar features of violence and horror which had marked the strife of former generations —fields ploughed by the cannon ball,' and walls shattered * Smollett, III. 436. " The French inveighed against the capture of their 3hips, be- fore any declaration of war, as flagrant acts of piracy ; and some neutral powers of Europe seemed to consider them in the same point of view. It was certainly high time to check the insolence of the French by force of arms ; Knd surely this might have been as effectually and expeditiously exerted under the usual sanction of a formal declaration, the omission of which exposed the ad- ministration to the censure of our neighbors, and fixed the impu- tation of fraud and freebooting on the beginning of the war."- Smollett. III. AAi - - -- - — . - "C^-*— 1 3 TTT COLLISION OF THE RIVAL COLONIES. 77 by -he exploding mine, sacked towns and blazing suburbs the lamentations of women, and the licence of a mad' dened soldiery. But in America, war assumed a new and striking aspect. A wilderness was its sublime arena Army met army under the shadows of primeval woods • their cannon resounded over wastes unknown to civilized man. And^fore the hostile powers could join in battle, endless forests must be traversed, and morasses passed and everywhere the axe of the pioneer must hew a path for the bayonet of the soldier. Before the declaration of war, and before the breaking otf of negotiations between the courts of France and Enffl land the English ministry formed the plan of assailing the French m America on all sides at once, and repelling them, by one bold push, from all their encroachments A provincial army was to advance upon Acadia, a second was to attack Crown Point, and a third Niagara: while the two regiments which had lately arrived in Virginia under General Braddock, aided by a strong body of pro- vincials, were to dislodge the French from their newlv- built fort of Du Quesne. To Braddock was assigned the chief command of all the British forces in America • and a person worse fitted for the office oould scarcely have been found His experience had been ample, and none could doubt his courage ; but he was profligate, arrogant perverse, and a bigot to mUitaiy rules.* On his first hlJ^'^ !u"T'"u^ '^ ^^""^^^ Walpole's testimony, and writers of better authority have expressed themselves, with less UveUnJL and piquancy, to the same effect :- ^ " Braddock is a very Iroquois in disposition. He had a sister rer:;if'wrtl\TVT f!"''. ""^^ ^«^*-« -' Bath hinged herself with a truly Enghsh deliberation, leaving only a note shoTe ' &c m '*' P^^ "f ^' ' ^"^ ^'^ '' ^^"^^^"^ oa sol silent Fan«;f T «i ^".,^''''^f^^ ^^'*°^d «^ i^' ^« «nly «aid, 'Poor Fanny! I always thought she would be forced to tuck hers^^ Here follows a curious anecdote of Biaddock's meanness and profligacy, which I omit. The next is more to his Credit - H« once had a duel with Gnlnnoi r..,^i.,"T _. . !! ?f . ^ ."® Who had been his great friend; M^ ^^ ^l^^ 78 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. 'Sm A 'IP arrival in Virginia, he called together the governors of the several provinces, in order to explain his instructions and adjust the details of the projected operations. These arrangements complete, Braddock advanced to the borders of Virginia, and formed his camp at Fort Cumberland, where he spent several weeks in trianing the raw back- woodsmen, who joined him, into such discipline as they seemed capable of; in collecting horses and wagons, which could only be had with the utmost difficulty ; in railing at the contractors, who scandalously cheated him ; and in venting his spleen by copious abuse of the country and the people. All at length was ready, and early in June, 1755, the army left civilization behind, and struck into the broad wilderness as a squadron puts out to sea. It was no easy task to force their way over that rugged ground, covered wit^ an unbroken growth of forest ; and the difficulty was increased by the needless load of bag- gage which encumbered their march. The crash of fall- ing trees resounded in the front, where a hundred axemen labored, with ceaseless toil, to hew a passage for the army. The horses strained their utmost strength to drag the ponderous wagons over roots and stumps, through gullies and quagmires ; and the regular troops were daunted by the depth and gloom of the forest which hedged them in on either hand, and closed its leafy arches above their heads. So tedious was their progress, that, by the adv^oe of Washington, twelve hundred chosen men moved on in advance with the lighter baggage and artillery, leaving the rest of the army to follow, by slower stages, with the heavy wagons. On the eighth of July, the advanced body Gumley, who had good humor and wit, (Braddock had the lat- ter,) said, ' Braddock, you are a poor dog I Here, take my purse. If you kill me, you will be forced to run away, and then you will not have a shilling to support you.' Braddock refused the purse, insisted on the duel, was disarmed, and would not even ask his life. However, with all his brutality, he had lately been gover- nor of Gibraltar, where he made himself adored, and where scarce any governor was endured heiore."— Letter to Sir H, Mann, CCLXV. CCLXVI. MARCH OF BRADDOCK. 79 mched the Monongahela, at a point not far distant from tort du Quesne. The rocky and in.practicable ground on the eastern side debarred their passage, and t^^ general resolved to cross the river in search of a smoother C'thefoT^Th'fl 'r '""^'' '"'''' down, in order to g.un the fort The first passage was easily made, and the Uoops moved, m glittering array, down the western margin of the water, rejoicing that their goal was we ZtT ' '^' """^ "' '"""^ ^-i-eeted triumph c7oe" Scouts and Indian runners had brought the tidings of Braddock's approach to the French at Fort du Qufsne Then- dismay was great, and Contrecceur, the commander thought only of retreat; when Beaujcu, a captaTin the garrison, made the bold proposal of leading out a mrtv of French and Indians to waylay the En|hsh in hi woods, and harass or interruptVeir ma^lfTh "offer wa^^accepted, a^d Beaujeu hastened to the Indln th^'^hTl ^l"" ^"'t "^^ ^"^'■'^ *« ^-IJace"* forest were the bark lodges of savage hordes, who^ the French C HuronfandT '^I '"^ "'"'^' ''^'''^^ and Ott,^' Hurons and Caughnawagas, Abenakis and Delawares theToundw^'.r™'^ together, flung a hatS on the ground before them, and invited them to follow him out to battle ; .but the boldest stood aghast at the per™ and none would accept the challenge. A second to terview took place with no better success ; but the French: to go, he exclaimed. "What, will you suffer vnnr ^rther to go alone ? " His daring'spirit proved conte/ouT The warriors hesitated no longer ; and when on the nTrtLf thTEnr."' '"''' ^^''°"' ^-^ '"" * tent the TnH ^ ''™y "^"^ •'"' * fe^^ ™"e« dis- turmnil nf T""^' "^'"^ ** ""^^ »««'^ with the follZ "*?•■''?*'■''*>«"• Chiefs harangued their yelling followers, braves bedaubed themselves with warnaSf ......... v^^ witu grease, nuiig feathers in their 'i llli 80 THE CONSPIUACY OF rONTIAC. sculp-locks, and whoopod and Htamped till they had wrouglil thcinselvt's into a doliriuni of valor. That morning, .lanus Smith, an EngliHh prisoner re- cently uajJtured on the frontier of PennHylvania, stood on the rampart, and saw tlu^ half-frenzied nmltitnde throng, ing about tiie gateway, where kegs of bullets nnd giui- powder were broken oiKjn, that eaeh might help himself at will.* Then band after band hastened away towards the forest, followed and supported by nearly two hundred and lifty French and Canatlians, commanded by Heaujeu. There were the Ottawas, led on, it is said, by the remark- able man whose name stands on the title-page of this his- tory ; there were the Hurons of Lorette under their chief, whom the French called Athanase,t and many more, ali keen as hounds on the scent of blood. At about nine miles from the fort, they reached a spot where the nar- row road descended to the river through deep and gloomy woods, and where two ravines, concealed by trees and bushes, seemed formed by nature for an ambuscade. Here the warriors ensconced theniselves, and, levelling their guns over the edge, lay in fierce expectation, listen- ing to the advancing drums of the English army. It was past noon of a day brightened with the clear sunlight of an American midsummer, when the forces of Braddock began, for a second time, to cross the Mononga- hela, at the fording-place, which to this day bears the name of their ill-fated leader. The scarlet colunms of the British regulars complete in martial appointment, the rude backwoodsmen with shouldered rifles, the trahis of artillery and the white-topped wagons, moved on in long * Sniitli's Narrative. Tliis interesting account has been several times published. It may be found in Drake's Tragedies of the Wilderness. t " Went to Lorette, an Indian village about eight nvles from Quebec. Saw the Indians at mass, and heard them sing psalms tolei-ably well~a dance. Got well acquainted with Athanase, who was commander of the Indians who defeated General Brad- dock, in 1755— a very sensible fellow."— MS. Journal of an Eng- lish Gentleman on a Tour thi-ough Canada, in 1765. BRADDOCK'S DEFEAT. 81 procession through the broad and shallow current, and slowly mounted the opposinff bank.* Men were there whose names liave become historic; Gage, who, twenty years later, saw his routed battalions nicoil in disorder from before the breastwork on liunker Hill ; Gates, the future conqueror of Burgoyne; iind one destined t J far loftier fame, George Washington, a boy in years, a man in calm thought and self-ruling wisdom. With steady and well-ordered march, the troops ad- vanced into the great labyrintli of woods which shadowed the eastern borders of the river. Hank after rank vanished from sight. The forest swallowed them up, and the silence of the wilderness sank down once more on the shores and waters of the Monongahela. Several guides and six light horsemen led the way ; a body of grenadiers was close behind, and the arm\' fol- lowed in such order as the rough ground would permit Their road was tunnelled through the forest ; yet, deaf alike to the voice of common sense and to the < ounsel of his officers, Braddock had neglected to throw out scouts m advance, and pressed forward in blind security to meet his fate. Leaving behind the low grounds which bor- dered on the river, the van of the army was now ascending a gently-sloping hill ; and here, well hidden by the thick standmg columns of the forest, by mouldering prostrate trunks, by matted undergrowth, and long rank grasses, Liy on either flank the two fatal ravines where the Indian allies of the French were crouched in breathless ambuscade. Ko My feelings were heightened by the warm and glowing nar- ration of that day's events, by Dr. Walker, who was an eye-wit- ness. He pointed out the ford where the army crossed the Mo- nongahela, (below Turtle Creek, 800 yards.) A finer sight could not have been beheld-the slxining barrels of the muskets, the ex- oeilent order of the men, the cleanliness of their appearance, the joj depicted on every face at being so near Fort du Quesne— the nghest object of their wishes. The music reechoed through the lulls. How brilliant the morning— how melancholy the evenin - ' -Letter of Judge Veates, dated August, 1776. See Haz., Pa.* Tf^TTif ■,'iu ^>. i IMAGE EVALUATrON TEST TARGET (MT-3) 4 2< v.. ^ 4i. 1.0 1.1 l^|2^ 12.5 " I— 12.2 1^ m us lAQ IL25 i 1.4 2,0 Li 1.6 Hiotographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14590 (716) 873-4503 ? ,V ood Creek, ana gained the rear of the English army with a force of about two thousand French and Indians At midnight, on the seventh of September, the tidings reached Johnson that the army of the French baron was but a few miles disUnt . .om his camp. A council of war was called, and the strange resolution formed of detaching a thousand men to meet the enemy. « If they are to be killed," said Hendrick, the Mohawk chief, "they are too many; if they are to fight, they are too few." His re- monstrance was unheeded, and the brave old savage, un- able from age and corpulence, to fight on the foot mounted his horse, and joined the English detachment with two hundred of his warriors. At sunrise, the party defiled from the camp, and, entering the forest disappeared from the eyes of their comrades. Those who remained behind labored with all the energv of alarm to fortify their unprotected camp. An hour elapsed, when from the distance was heard a sudden ex- plosion of musketry. The excited soldiers suspended their work to listen. A rattling fire succeeded, deadened among the woods, but growing louder and nearer, till none could doubt that their comrades had met the French and were defeated. ' This was indeed the case. Marching through thick woods, by the narrow and newly-cut road which led along the valley stretching southward from Lak3 George, Williams, the English commander, had led his men full into an ambuscade, where all Dieskau's army lay in wait to receive them. From the woods on both sides rose an r?^ \ 86 THE CONSPIRACY OF PGNTIAC. appalling shout, followed by a storm of bullets. W illiams was soon shot down ; Hendrick shared his fate ; many officers fell, and the road was strewn with dead and wounded soldiers. The English gave way at once. Had they been regular troops, the result would have been most fatal; but every man was a woodsman and a hunter. Some retired in bodies along the road ; but the greater part spread themselves through the forest, oppos- ing a wide front to the enemy, and lighting stubbornly as they retreated. They shot back at the French from be- hind every tree or bush that could afford a cover. The ^ Canadians and Indians pressed them closely, darting, with shrill cries, from tree to tree, while Dieskau's regulars, with steadier advance, bore all before them. Far and wide through the forest rang shout, and shriek, and Indian whoop, mingled with the deadly rattle of guns. Retreating and piirsing, the combatants passed north- ward towards the English camp, leaving the ground behind them strewn with dead and dying. A fresh detachment from the camp came in aid of the English, and the pursuit was checked. Yet the retreat- ing men were not the less rejoiced when they could dis- cern, between the brown columns of the woods, the moun- tains and waters of Lake George, with the white tents of their encampments on its shore. The French followed no farthp The blast of their trumpets was heard recalling their scattered men for a final attack. During the absence of Williams' (Jetachment, the main body of the army had covered the front of their camp with a breastwork, if that name can be applied to a row of logs, behind which the marksmen lay flat on their faces. This preparation was not yet complete, when the defeated troops appeared issuing from the woods. Breathless and perturbed, they entered the camp, and lay down with the rest. Full of dismal forebodings, the army waited the attack. Soon, at the edge of the woods which bordered the open space in front, painted Indians were seen, and bayonets glittered ai?»ong the foliage, shining, in the PROGRESS OF THE WAR. 87 homely comparison of a New England soldier, like a row 0 icicles on a January morning. The French i^gnlarT marched m column to the edge of the clearing! and formed in line confronting the English at the distance of a hundred and fifty yards. Their complete order, thet white uniforms and bristling bayonets, were a new and starthng sight to the eyes of Johnson's rustic soTdiers who raised but a feeble cheer in answer to the shouts of their enemies. Happily, Dieskau made no assault The regulars opened a distant fire, throwing volley after volley aLTndf' r'"'*- *' ^"S"*' ^'^"« *e Ca^dians Sank of r* •^■^P7>°g through the morasses on each flank of the camp, fired sharply, under cover of tlie trees and bushes. In the rear, the English were protected by the lake; but on the three remaining sides, they were liedged m by the flash and smoke of musketry The fire of the French had little effect. The English recovered from their first surprise, and every moment heir confidence rose higher and tteir shouts gewTX Levelling their long hunting guns with J>1 JrecS' they returned a fire which thinned the ranks of th^ French, and galled them beyond endurance. Two .Inon sheltered the Canadians and Indians; and though the pieces were served with little skill, the assailants were so temfled by the crashing of the balls among the teunks and branches, that they gave way at once. Dieskrstill 0 clock, the firing was scarcely abated, when, at length wavfr; • rt'°th''' ^.^^^ •'^''"'"^■y- *«-«•! ^^^-^^i wavering. At this, with a general shout, the Enitlish strikwT*f «''™P: «"e la Beinef^ promptly replied the Highland cap- tain, who chanced to know that the corps so designated formed part of Bougainville's command. As boats were frequently passing down the river with supplies for the garrison, and as a convoy from Bougainville was expected that very night, the sentinel was deceived, and allowed the English to proceed. A few moments after, they were challenged again, and this time they could discern the soldier running close down to the water's edge, as if all his suspicions were aroused; but the skilful replies of the Highlander once more saved the party from discovery. They reached thjB landing-place in safety— an indenta- tion in the shore, about a league above the city, and now bearing the name of Wolfe's Cove. Here a narrow path led up the face of the heights, and a French guard was posted at the top to defend the pass. By the force of the current, the foremost boats, including that which carried Wolfe himself, were borne a Uttle below the spot. The general was one of the first on shore. He looked upward at the rugged heights which towered above him in the gloom. " You can try it," he coolly observed to an officer near him ; " but I don't think you'll get up. At the point where the Highlanders landed, one of their captains, Donald Macdonald, ^apparently the same whose presence of mind had just saved the enterprise from ruin, was climbiig in advance of his men, when he was challenged by a sentinel. He replied in French, by de- claring that he had been sent to relieve the guard, and ordering the soldier to withdraw. Before the latter was undeceived, a crowd of Highlanders were close at hand, while the steeps below were thronged with eager climbers, dragging themselves up by trees, roots, and bushes. The sruard turned out. and made a brief fhAinTVi Kihitt^ T.^e.to4^ ance. In a moment, they were cut to pieces, dispersed, BATTLE OF QUEBEC. 99 or made prisoners ; while men after men came swarming up the height, and quickly formed upon the plains above. Meanwhile, the vessels had dropped downward with the current, and anchored opposite the landing-place. The remaining troops were disembarked, and, with the dawn of day, the whole were brought in safety to the shore. The sun rose, and, from the ramparts of Quebec, the astonished people saw the Plains of Abraham glittering with arms, and the dark-red lines of the English forming in array of battle. Breathless messengers had barne the evil tidings to Montcalm, and far and near his wide-ex- tended camp resounded with the rolling of alarm drums and the din of startled preparation. He too had had his struggles and his sorrows. The civ il power had thwarted him ; famine, discontent, and disaffection were rife among his soldiers ; and no small portion of the Canadian militia had dispersed from sheer starvation. In spite of all, he had trusted to hold out till the winter frosts should drive the invaders from before the town ; when, on that disas- trous morning, the news of their successful temerity fell like a cannon shot upon his ear. Still he assumed a tone of confidence. « They have got to the weak side of us at last," he is reported to have said, « and we must crush them with our numbers." With headlong haste, his troops were pouring over the bridge of the St. Charles, and gathering in heavy masses under the western ram- parts of the town. Could numbers give assurance of success, their triumph would have been secured ; for five French battalions and the armed colonial peasantry amounted in all to more than seven thousand five hun- dred men. Full in sight before them stretched the long, thin lines of the British forces— the half- wild Highland- ers, the steady soldiery of England, and the hardy levies of the provinces— less than five thousand in number, but all inured to battle, and strong in the full assurance of success. Yet, could the chiefs of that gallant army have pierced the secrets of the future, could they have foreseen that the victory which they burned to achieve would 100 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. have robbed England of her proudest boast, that the con- quest of Canada would pave the way for the independence of America, their swords would have dropped from their hands, and the heroic fire have gone out within their hearts. It was nine o'clock, and the adverse armies stood mo- tionless, each gazing on the other. The clouds hung low, and, at intervals, warm light showers descended, be- sprinkling both alike. The coppice and cornfields in front of the British troops were filled with French sharp- shooters, who kept up a distant, spattering fire. Here and there a soldier fell in the ranks, and the gap was filled in silence. At a little before ten, the British could see that Mont- calm was preparing to advance, and, in a few moments, all his troops appea]|fed in rapid motion. They came on in three divisions, shouting after the manner of their nation, and firing heavily as soon as they came within range. In the British ranks, not a trigger was pulled, not a soldier stirred ; and their ominous composure seemed to damp the spirits of the assailants. It was not till the French were within forty yards that the fatal word was given. At once, from end to end of the British line, the muskets, rose to the level, as if with the sway of some great ma- chine, and the whole blazed forth at once in one crashing explosion. Like a ship at full career, arrested with sud- den ruin on a sunken rock, the columns of Montcalm staggered, shivered, and broke before that wasting storm of lead. The smoke, rolling along the field, for a moment shut out the view ; but when the white wreaths were scattered on the wind, a wretched spectacle was dis- closed ; men and officers tumbled in heaps, columns re- solved into a mob, order and obedience gone ; and when the British muskets were levelled for a second volley, the masses were seen to cower and shrink with uncontrol- lable panic. For a few minutes, the French regulars stood their oTOund- retiiminc a ah am and i^o^ inpfFectuni fire. But now, echoing cheer on cheer, redoubling volley DEATH OF WOLFE. 101 on volley, trampling the dying and the dead, and driving the fugitives in crowds ; the British troops advanced and swept the field before them. The ardor of the men burst all restraint. They broke into a run, and with unsparing slaughter chased the flying multitude to the very gates of Quebec. Foremost of all, the light-footed pT^ghlanders dashed along in furious pursuit, hewing down the French- men with their broadswords, and slaying many in the very ditch of the fortifications. Never was victory more quick or more decisive. In the short action and pursuit, the French lost fifteen hundred men, killed, wounded, and taken. Of the re- mainder, some escaped within the city, and others fled across the St. Charles to rejoin their comrades who had been left to guard the camp. The pursuers were recalled by sound of trumpet; the broker ranks were formed afresh, and the English troops withdrawn beyond reach of the cannon of Quebec. Bougainville, with his detach- ment, arrived from the upper country, and, hovering about their rear, threatened an attack ; but when he saw what greeting was prepared for him, he abandoned his purpose and withdrew. Townshend and Murray, the only general officers who remained unhurt, passed to the head of every regiment in turn, and thanked the soldiers for tiie bravery they had shown ; yet the triumph of the victors was mingled with sadness as the tidings went from rank to rank that Wolfe had fallen. In the heat of the action, as he advanced at the head of the grenadiers of Louisburg, a bullet shattered his wrist ; but he wrapped his handkerchief about the wound, and showed no sign of pain. A moment more, and a ball pierced his side. Still he pressed forward, waving his sword and cheering his soldiers to the attack, when a third shot lodged deep within his breast. He paused, reeled, and staggering to one side, fell to the earth. Brown, a lieutenant of the grenacMers, Henderson, a vol- unteer, an officer of artillery, and a private soldie7 raised him together m their arms, and, bearing him to the rear, 102 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. laid him softly on the grass. They asked if he would have a surgeon ; but he shook his head, and answered that all was over with him. His eyes closed with the torpor of approaching death, and those around sustained his fainting form. Yet they could not withhold their gaze from the wild turmoil before them, and the charging ranks of their companions rushing through fire and smoke. "See how they run," one of the officers ex- claimed, as the French fled in confusion before the levelled bayonets. " Who run ? " demanded Wolfe, open- ing his eyes like a man aroused from sleep. " The en- emy, sir," was the reply ; " they give way everywhere." « Then," said the dying general, " tell Colonel Burton to march Webb's regiment down to Charles River, to cut oflE their retreat from the bridge. Now, God be praised, I will die in peace,'^ he murmured ; and, turning on his side, he calmly breathed his last.* Almost at the same moment fell his great adversary, Montcalm, as he strove, with useless bravery, to rally his shattered ranks. Struck down with a mortal wound, he was placed upon a litter and borne to the General Hos- pital on the banks of the St. Charles. The surgeons told him that he could not recover. " I am glad of it," was his calm reply. He then asked how long he might sur- vive, and was told that he had not many hours remain- ing. " So much the better," he said ; " I am happy that I shall not live to see the surrender of Quebec." Officers from the garrison came to his bedside to ask his orders and instructions. " I will give no more orders," replied the defeated soldier ; « I have much business that must be attended to, of greater moment than your ruined garri- son and this wretched country. My time is very short ; therefore, pray leave me." The officers withdrew, and none remained in the chamber but his confessor and the Bishop of Quebec To the last, he expressed his contempt * Knox, li. 78. iknox derived his informatiou frointu^ persoa who supported Wolfe in his dying moments. SURRENDER OF QUEBEC. 103 for his own mutinous and half-famished troops, and his admiration for the disciplined valor of hio opponents He died before midnight, and was buried at his own de- 8ire in a cavity of the earth formed by the bursting of a bombshell. The victorious army encamped before Quebec, and pushed their preparations for the siege with zealous energy; but before a single gun was brought to bear, the white flag was hung out, and the ararrison surrendered On the eighteenth of September, 1759, the rock-built citadel of Canada passed forever from the hands of its ancient masters. The victory on the Plains of Abraham and the down- fall of Quebec filled all England with pride and exulta- tion. From north to south, the whole land blazed with illuminations, and resounded with the ringing of bells, the firing of guns, and the shouts of the multitude. In 'one village alone all was dark and silent amid the general joy; for here dwelt the widowed mother of Wolfe. The populace, with unwonted delicacy, respected her lonely sorrow, and forbore to obtrude the sound of their rejoic- ings upon her grief for one who had been through life her pride and solace, and repaid her love with a tender and constant devotion. Canada, crippled and dismembered by the disasters of this year's campaign, lay waiting, as it were, the final stroke which was to extinguish her last remains of life and close the eventful story of French dominion in America. Her limbs and her head were lopped away bat life still fluttered at her heart. Quebec, Niagara, Fron- tenac, and Crown Point had fallen ; but Montreal and the adjacent country still held out, and thither, with the opening season of 1760, the British commanders turned all their energies. Three armies were to enter Canada afc three several points, and, conquering as they advanced, converge towards Montreal as a common centre. In ac- cordance With this plan Sir Jeffrey Amherst embarked at Oswego, crossed Lake Ontario, and descended the St 104 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. Lawrence with ten thousand men ; while Colonel Haviland advanced by way of Lake Champlain and the River Sorel, and General Murray ascended from Quebec, with a body of the veterans who had fought on the Plains of Abraham. By a singular concurrence of fortune and skill, the three armies reached the neighborhood of Montreal on the Same day. The feeble and disheartened garrison could offer no resistance, and on the eighth of September, 1760, the Marquis de Vaudreuil surrendered Canada, with all its dependencies, to the British crown. CHAPTER V. TUB WILDERNESS AND ITS TENANTS AT THE CLOSE OP THE FRENCH WAR. We have already seen how, after the defeat of Brad- dock, the western tribes rose with one accord against the English. Then, for the first time, Pennsylvania felt the scourge of Indian war ; and her neighbors, Maryland and Virginia, shared her misery. Through the autumn of 1755, the storm raged with devastating fury; but the following year brought some abatement of its violence. This may be ascribed partly to the interference of the Iroquois, who, at the instances of Sir William Johnson, urged the Dela wares to lay down the hatchet, and partly to the persuasions of several prominent men among the Quakers, who, by kind and friendly treatment, had gained the confidence of the Indians. By these means, thai, portion of the Delawares and their kindred tribes who dwelt upon the Susquehanna, were induced to send a deputation of chiefs to Easton, in the summer of 1757, to meet the provincial delegates ; and here, after much delay and difficulty, a treaty of peace was concluded. This treaty, however, did not embmce the Indians of the Ohio, who comprised the most formidable part of the Delawares and Shawanoes, and who still continued their murderous attacks. It was not till the summer of 1758, when General Forbes, with a considerable army, Was ad- vancing against Fort du Quesne, that these exasperated savages could be brought to reason. Well knowing that, should Forbes prove successful, they might expect a sum- mary chastisement for their misdeeds, they began to waver in their attachment to the French : and the latter, in tho 105 106 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. hour of peril, found themflelvea threatened with desertion by allies who had shown an ample alacrity in the season of prosperity. This new tendency of the Ohio Indians was fostered by a wise step on the part of the English. A mar was found bold and hardy enough to venture into the midst of their villages, bearing the news of the treaty at Easton, and the approach of Forbes, coupled with pro- posals of pepce from the governor of Pennsylvania. This stout-hearted eiiiisstry was Christian Frederic Post, a Moravian miHsiouary, who had lon,^ lived wit!i the Indians, had twice ' arried among them, and, by his up- right dealings and plain good sense, had gained their confidence and esteem. Ilis devout and conscientious spirit, his fidelity to what he deemea his duty, his im- perturbable courage, his prudence and his address, well fitted him for the qritical mission. Ilis journals, written in a style of quaint simplicity, are full of lively details, and afford a minute and graphic picture of forest life and character. He left Philadelphia in July, attended by a party of friendly Indians, on whom he relied for protection. Reaching the Ohio, he found himself beset with incalcu- lable perils from the jealousy and malevolence of the savage warriors, and the machinations of the French, who would gladly have destroyed him.* Yet he found * The following are extracts from his journals : — *• We set out from Kushkushkee for Sankonk ; my company conp^pted of twenty-five hoi-semen and fifteen foot. We arrived at bcii. T tr ;n the afternoon. The peoplfe of the town were much dip v-i. my con ';ig, and received me in a very rough man- ner. i.ney surrounded me with drawn knives in their hands, in such a manner that I could hardly get along ; running up against me with their breasts open, as if they wanted some pretence to kill me. I saw by their countenances they sought my death. Their faces were quite distorted with rage, and they went so far as to say I should not live long ; but some Indians, with whom 1 was formerly acquainted, coming up and saluting me in a friendly manner, their behavior to me was quickly changed." . . . . " Some of my party desired me not to stir from the fire, ■P^^ 4-'Uni- t-Vta "Wva-nnh V\ar\ nfFaroi^ tx rrvoaf voixrnrH fnr mv SP.J»1n. nnd that there were several parties out on that purpose. Accordingly THE DELAWARES AND 8HAWAN0ES. 107 friends wherever he went, and finally succeeded in con- vincing the Indians that their true interest lay in a strict neutrality. When, therefore, Forbes appeared before Fort Duquesne, the French found themselves abandoned to their own resources ; and, unable to hold their ground, they retreated down the Ohio, leaving the fort an easy conquest I stuck constantly as close to the fire as if I had been chained there "In the afternoon, all the captains gathered together in the middle town ; they sent for us, and desired wo should give them information of our message. Accordingly we did. We read the message with great satisfaction to t hem. It was a great pleasure both to them* and us. The numl)er of captains and counsellors were sixteen. In the evening, messengers arrived from Fort Duquesne, with a string of wampum from the commander ; upon which they all came together in the liouse where we lodged. The messengers delivered their string, with these words from their father, the French king : — •"My children, come to me, and hear what I have to say. The English are coming with an army to destroy both you and me. I therefore desire you immediately, my children, to hasten with all the young men ; we will drive the English and destroy them. I, as a father, will tell you always what is best.' He laid the string before one of the captains. After a little conversation, the captain stood up, and said, ' I have just heard something of our brethren, the English, which pleaseth me much bettor. I will not go. Give it to the others ; maybe they will go.' The mes- senger took up again the string, and said. • He won't go ; he has heard of the English.' Tiien all cried out, ' Yes, yes, we have heard from the English.' He then threw the string to the other fire-place, where the other captains v^ere ; but they kicked it from one to another, as if it was a snake. Captain Peter took a stick, and with it flung the string from one end of the room to the other^ and said, • Give it to the French captain, and let him go with his young men ; he boasted much of his fighting ; now let us see his fighting. We have often ventured our lives for him ; and had hardly a loaf of bread when we came to him ; and now he thinks we should jump to serve him.' Then we saw the French captain mortified to the uttermost ; he looked as pale as death. The Indians discoursed and joked till midnight ; and the French cap- tain sent messengers at midnight to Fort Duquesne." ^The kicking about of the wampum belt is the usual indication oi contempt for the message of which the belt is the token. The uses of wampum will be described hereafter. los Tin*: ooNsiMRAcy or pontiao. to Iho InvHtltM'H. DuvUtf? t}u> Lnttmin, fhi> Ohio Indians Hont tholr «lo|>utloM to Kuiiton, whoro a |jf»viit coiim^il wiiH hoM, luui a foiMUrtl poiu'«» coiu'IiuUm willr tlu< |)rovin<'t»H. \Vhll«» ih«» frlondwhip of (lu»so t .ibos was (Iuih Umt luul iH^^fnliUMl, thoir anoli»nl tyrants, tlH> InxiuolH, iHMnainnl in u st4»to of lrs of tho llrst oanipalgn had glvon tluMn hnt a oontouiptlbh* Idoa of Hritish i>rowoss. This hnpnvMslon was dooponiMl, whon, on tho following ytMir, tJu\v saw Oswo^:^^ tak(M\ hy tho Fn^tch, and tho Ihitlsh ^ftMtoral, Wt^hh, rotrt»at with dastardly^haslo fum\ an onon»y who dul not plo. Hnt now a now oUMUont was infnsod iiUo tho Hritish oonnsols. Tho for- t\n»os K\( thi» oontlii't lH^g'5\n to ohang\\ i)n Qnosno and l.\>nlshuvj¥ woiv takon, and tho Irtmnoisoonooivod a hottor opinloti of tho Hritish arms. Thoir friomlship was no Um|jt>r a mattor of donht ; and in 17(>0, wIumi Amhorsfc wi»s piViHU ing tv> ailvanoo on ^hu^tr^\^l, tho warriors tlookod t\^ his oanip liko vnltnros to tho oxpootod oaroass. Yot thoix* is litilo donht, that, hamtor8 followed tho tiiotatos of thoir tHH>lor jndj;:n\ont, thoy wonld not havo aidod in dostnwini? (^anada; t\>r thoy oi add see that in tho inUonios lU' I'Vantv lay tho only hirrior aj^piinst thojyixnving iH>worand anihition of Iho Knjjjlish provinws. Tho UniNMis of l.tavtto, tho AlHMtakis, ami i>thor dom- ioiliatod trilvs of l^\nada nuigxni tluMnsolvos on tho side of Fiuniv thixniirhont tho wur, and at itvS oonolnsion, thoy, in n\n»on with tho i^vnaiiians, may Ih> ivg;udoj>U\ Tho nnmon>ns trilvs of t!u> n^noto \>Tst had, with few oxvvptiotis playiHl tho v^ut of aotivo allios of tho Fixnioh ; ;md wurriiM"s mijjht K» t\>nnd on tlio farthest shores of T.^ike %i~>t V-<1iHicc witli t)tt> jjCiUivKvkjji of nuinleriHl Ki\glishnion. With the oonquest WESTERN TKllJi:S-TIIE FOUEST. 109 of Canada, Uu^ho iiilHm Hu))Ni(ht(l into aNtaU; of passive iu- action, \vhi(iii waH not dostinttd lon^ to (!ontinue. An, continuous forest shadowed the fertile soil, covering the land as Dw grass (jovers a garden lawn, sweeping ov(U' iiill and hollow in endless undulation, bury- ing inount-ains in verdun*, and mantling brooks and rivers from the light of arties of the north and south. A great part of Upper Canada, of Michigan, and of Illi' >is, besides other por- tions of the west> were tenanted by wild beasts alone. To form a close estimate of the numl»ers of the erratic b.^«^^.x....,^ *!.;., ...:i.i«. „., i.j v.. _ i.- _j. tempt ; but it may be affirmed that, between the Missis- ^1 i! • j -4 - I 110 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. i' sippi on the west and the ocean on the east, between the Ohio on the south and Lake Superior on the north, the whole Indian population, at the close of the French war, did not greatly exceed ten thousand fighting men. Of these, following the statement of Sir William Johnson in 1763, the Iroquois had nineteen hundred and fifty, the Delawares about six hundred, the Shawanoes about three hundred, the Wyandots about four hundred and fifty, and the Miami tribes, with their neighbors the Kickapoos, eight hundred ; while the Ottawas, the Ojibwas, and other wandering tribes of the north, defy all efforts at enu- meration. A close survey of the condition of the tribes at this period will detect some signs of improvement, but many more of degeneracy and decay. To commence with the Iroquois, for to thtem with justice the priority belongs ; Onondaga, the ancient capital of their confederacy, where their council-fire had burned from immemorial time, was now no longer what it had been in the days of its great- ness, when Count Frontenac had mustered all Canada to assail it. The thickly-clustered dwellings, with their triple rows of palisades, had vanished. A little stream, twisting along the valley, choked up with logs and drift- wood, and half hidden by woods and thickets, some forty houses of bark, scattered along its banks, amid rank grass, neglected clumps of bushes, and ragged patches of corn and peas, — such was Onondaga when Bartram saw it, and such, no doubt, it remained at the time of which I write. Conspicuous among the other structures, and distin- guished only by its superior size, stood the great council- house, whose bark walls had often sheltered the con- gregated wisdom of the confederacy, and heard the highest efforts of forest eloquence. The ot.xer villages of the Iroquois resembled Onondaga; for though several were of larger size, yet none retained those defensive stockades which had once protected them. From their xiiuropean neighbors the Iroquois had boirowed many ap- pliances of comfort and subsistence. Horses, swine, and NATIVE POPULATION. Ill in some instances cattle, were to be found among them. Guns and gunpowder aided them in the chase. Knives, hatchets, kettles, and hoes of iron had supplanted their rude household utensils and implements of tillage; but with all this, English whiskey had more than cancelled every benefit which English civilization had conferred. High up the Susquehanna were seated the Nanticokes, Conoys, and Mohicans, with a portion of che Dcla wares. Detached bands of the western Iroquois dwelt upon the head waters of the Alleghany, mingled with their neigh- bors, the Dela wares, who had several villages upon this stream. The great body of the latter nation, however, lived upon the Beaver Creeks and the Muskingum, in numerous scattered towns and hamlets, whose barbarous names it is useless to record. Squalid log cabins and conical wigwams of bark were clustered at random, or ranged to form rude streets and squares. Starveling horses grazed on the neighboring meadows; girls and children bathed and laughed in the adjacent river; warriors smoked their pipes in haughty indolence ; squaws labored in the cornfields, or brought fagots from the forest, and shri\ jlled hags screamed from lodge to lodge. In each village one large building stood prom- inent among the rest, devoted to purposes of public meeting, dances, festivals, and the entertamment of stran- gers. Thither the traveller would be conducted, seated on a bear-skin, and plentifully regaled with hominy and venison. The Shawanoes had fixed their abode upon the Scioto and its branches. Farther towards the west, on the waters of the Wabash and the Maumee, dwelt the Miamis, who, less exposed, from their position, to the poison of the whiskey keg, and the example of debauched traders, retained their ancient character and customs in greater purity than their eastern neighbors. This cannot be said of the Illinois, who dwelt near the borders of the ''■-'• ••i'x'> «ii'>^t. rriiw, iidving iiveu. lur iiiure uian half a century in close contact with the French, had II i li ' h 4 r 112 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. become a corrupt and degenerate race. The Wyan- dots of Sandusky and Detroit far surpassed the sur- rounding tribes in energy of character and social prog- ress. Their log dwellings were strong and commodious, their agriculture was very considerable, their name stood high in war and policy, and by all the adjacent Indians they were regarded with deference. It is needless to pursue farther this catalogue of tribes, since the position of each will appear hereafter as they advance in turn upon the stage of action. The English settlements lay like a narrow strip be- tween the wilderness and the sea, and, as the sea had its ports, so also the forest had its places of rendezvous and outfit. Of these, by far the most important in the northern provinces was the frontier city of Albany. From thence it w^^s that traders and soldiers, bound to the country of the Iroquois, or the more distant wilds of the interior, set upon their arduous journey. Embark- ing in a bateau or a canoe, rowed b> those hardy men who earned their livelihood in this service, the traveller would ascend the Mohawk, passing the old Dutch town of Schenectady, the two seats of Sir William Johnson, Fort Hunter at the mouth of the Schoharie, and Fort Herkimer at the German Flats, until he reached Fort Stanwix at the head of the river navigation. Then crossing overland to Wood Creek, he would follow its tortuous course, overshadowed by the dense forest on its banks, until he arrived at ^the little fortification called the Royal Blockhouse, and the waters of the Oneida Lake spread before him. Crossing to its western extremity, and passing under the wooden ramparts of Fort Brewer- ton, he would descend the River Oswego to Oswego,* * MS. Journal of Lieutenant Gorell, 1763. Annoymous MS. Journal of a Tour to Niagara in 1765. The following is an ex- tract from the latter : — '•July 2d. Dined with Sir Wm. at Johnson Hall. The office of Superintendent very troublesome. Sir vVm. continually plagued with Indians about him— generally from 300 to 900 in THE FOREST TRAVELLER. 113 on the banks of Lake Ontario. Here the vast navigations of the Great Lakes would be open before him, interrupted only by the difficult portage at the Cataract of Niagara. The chief thoroughfare from the middle colonies to the Indian country was from Philadelphia westward, across the Alleghanies, to the valley of the Ohio. Peace was no sooner concluded with the hostile tribes, than the adven- turous fur-traders, careless of risk to life and property, hastened over the mountains, each eager to be foremost in the wilderness market. Their merchandise was some- times carried in wagons as far as the site of Fort du Quesne, which the English rebuilt after its capture, chang- ing its name to Fort Pitt. From this point the goods were packed on the backs of horses, and thus distributed among the various Indian villages. More commonly, however, the whole journey was performed by means of trains, or, as they were called, brigades of packhorses, which, leaving the frontier settlements, climbed the shadowy heights of the Alleghanies, and threaded the forests of the Ohio, diving through thickets, and wading number— spoil his garden, and keep his house always dirty. . . . " 10th. Punted and rowed up the Mohawk River against the stream which, on account of tlie rapidity of the current, is very hard work for the poor soldiers. Encamped on the banks of the River, about 9 miles from Harkimer's. " The inconveniences attending a married Subaltern strongly appear in this tour. What with the sickness of their wives, tlie squealing of their children, and the smallness of their pay, I think the gentlemen discover no common share of philosophy in keeping themselves from running mad. Officers and soldiei-s, with their wives and children, legitimate and illegitimate, make altogether a pretty compound oglio, which does not tend towards showing military matrimony off to any great advantage. . . . '• Monday, 14th. Went on horseback by the side of Wood Creek 20 miles, to the Royal Blockhouse, a kind of wooden castle, proof against any Indian attacks. It is now abandoned by the troops, and a Sutler lives there, who keeps rum, milk, rackoons, etc., which, though none of the most elegant, is comfortable to strangers passing that way. The Blockhouse is situated on the east end of the Oneida Lake, and is surrounded by the Oneida Indians, one of the Six Nations." I'l 1 i I'll lU THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. 0V3r streams. The men employed in this perilous call- ing were a rough, bold, and intractable class, often as fierce and truculent as the Indians themselves. A blanket coat, or a frock of smoked deer-skin, a rifle on the shoulder, and a knife and tomahawk in the belt, formed their ordinary equipment. The principal trader, he owner of the merchandise, would fix his headquarters t some large Indian town, whence he would despatch his subordinates to the surrounding villages, with a suitable supply of blankets and red cloth, guns and hatchets, liquor, tobacco, paint, beads, and hawk's bells. This wild trafiac was liable to every species of disorder; and it is not to be wondered at that, in a region where law was unknown, the jealousies of rival traders should become a fruitful source of broils, robberies, and murders. In the backwoods, all land travelling was on foot, or on horseback. It was no easy matter for a novice, em- barrassed with his cumbrous gun, to urge his horse through the thick trunks and undergrowth, or even to ride at speed along the narrow Indian trails, where, at every yard, the impending branches switched him across the face. At night, the camp would be formed by the side of some rivulet or spring, and, if the traveller was skilful in the use of his rifle, a haunch of venison would often form his evening meal. If it rained, a shed of elm or bass wood bark was the ready work of an hour, a pile of evergreen boughs formed a bed, and the saddle or the knapsack a pillow. A party of Indian wayfarers would often be met journeying through the forest, a chief, or a warrior, perhaps, with his squaws and family. The Indians would usually make their camp in the neighborhood of the white men ; and at meal time the warrior would seldom fail to seat himself by the traveller's fire, and gaze with solemn gravity at the viands before him. If, when the repast was over, a fragment of bi ead or a cup of coffee should be handed to him, he would re- ceive these hierhlv-nrized rarities with a dppn pianniafion of gratitude; for nothing is more remarkable in the THE FOREST TRAVELL .R. 115 character of this people than the union of inordinate pride and a generous love of glory with the mendicity of a beggar or a child. He who wished to visit the remoter tribes of the Miss- issippi valley — an attempt, however, which, until several years after the conquest of Canada, no Englishman could have made without great risk of losing his scalp — would find no easier course than to descend the Ohio in a canoe or bateau. He might float fo^ more than eleven hundred miles down this liquid highway of the wilderness, and except the deserted cabins of Logstown, a little below Fort Pitt, the remnant of a Shawanoe village at the mouth of the Scioto, and an occasional hamlet or solitary wigwam along the luxuriant banks, he would discern no trace of human habitancy through all this vast extent. The body of the Indian population lay to the northward, about the waters of the tributary streams. It behoved the voyager to observe a sleepless caution and hawk-eyed vigilance. Sometimes his anxious scrutiny would detect a faint blue smoke stealing upward above the green bosom of the forest, and betraying the encamping place of some lurking war-party. Then the canoe would be drawn in haste beneath the overhanging bushes which skirted the shore ; nor would the voyage be resumed until darkness closed, when the little vessel would drift swiftly and safely past the point of danger. Within the nominal limits of the Illinois Indians, and towards the southern extremity of the present state of Illinois, were those isolated Canadian settlements, which had subsisted here since the latter part of the previous century. Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Vincennes were the centres of this scattered population. From Vincennes one might paddle his canoe northward up the Wabash, until he reached the little wooden fort of Ouatanon. Thence a path through the woods led to the banks of the Maumee. Two or three Canadians, or half breeds, of Vvho~i there were nunibers about the fort, would carry the canoe on their shoulders, or, for a bottle of whiskey, '': H] .!\ea fff^mw 116 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. n m a few Miami Indians might be brilied to undertake the task. On the Maumee, at the end of the path, stood Fort Miami, near the spot where Fort Wayne was afterwards built. From this point one might descend the Maumee to Lake Erie, and visit the neighboring- fort of Sandusky, or, if he chose, steer througli the Strait of Detroit, and explore the watery wastes of the northern lakes, finding occasional harborage at the little military posts which commanded their important points. Most of these western posts were transferred to the English, during the autumn of 1760 ; but the settlements of the Illinois remained several years longer under French control. Eastward, on the waters of Lake Erie and the Al- leghany, stood three small forts, Presqu'Isle, Le Boeuf, and Venango, which had passed into the hands of the English soon after the capture of Fort du Quesne. The feeble garrisons of all these western posts, exiled from civilization, lived in the solitude of military hermits. Through the long, hot days of summer, and the protracted cold of winter, time hung heavy on their hands. Their resources of employment and recreation were few and meagre. They found partners in their loneliness among the young beauties of the Indian camps. They hunted and fished, and shot at targets, and played at games of chance ; and when, by good fortune, a traveller found his way among them, he was greeted with a hearty and open- handed welcome, and plied with Ct^er questions touching the great world from which they were banished men. Yet, tedious as it was, their secluded life was seasoned with stirring danger. The surrounding forests were people I with a race dark and subtle as their own sunless mazes. At any hour, those jealous tribes might raise the war-cry. No human foresight could predict the sal- lies of their fierce caprice, and in ceaseless watching lay the only safety. When the Europ3an and the savage are brought in contact, both arc gainers, and both are losers." The HUNTERS AND TRAPPERS. nj former loses the refinements o( civilization, but he (tains, m the rough schooling of the wilderness, a proud inde- pendence, a self-sustaining energy, and powers of action an?o hero could dare more; yet his wield nrfl'";; "''^„«*'«"«»» 'Charms; and, while he can wield a rifle, he wiU never leave it. Go with him to the I til ,1 -I ,iii , 1 }• •IM ii' 'H ii I H 'If ni 118 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. lendezvous, and he is a stoic no more. Here, rioting among liis comrades, his native appetites break loose in mad excess, in deep carouse, and desperate gaming. Then follow close the quarrel, the challenge, the light, — two rusty rifles and fifty yards of prairie. The nursling of civilization, placed in the midst of the forest, and abandoned to his own resources, is helpless as an infant. There is no clew to the labyrinth. Bewildered and amazed, he circjles round and round in hopeless wanderings. Des[)air and famine make him their prey and unless the birds of heaven minister to his wants, lie dies in misery. Not so the practised woodsman. To him, the forest is a home. It yields him food, shelter, and raiment, and he threads its trackless depths with undeviating foot. To lure the game, to circumvent the lurking foe, to guide his course by the stars, the wind, the streams or the trees,— such are the arts which the white man has learned from the red. Often, indeed, the pupil has outstripped his master. He can hunt as well ; he can flght better ; and yet there are niceties of the woodsman's craft in which the white man must yield the palm to his savage rival. Seldom can he boast, in equal measure, that subtlety of sense, more akin to the instinct of brutes than to human reason, which reads the signs of the forest as the scholar reads the printed page, to which the whistle of a bird can speak clearly as the tongue of man, and the rustle of a leaf give knowledge of life or death.* With us the name of the gavage is a byword of *A striking example of Indian acuteness once came under my observation. Travelling in company with a Canadian named Raymond, and an Ogillallah Indian, we came at nightfall to a small stream called Chugwater, a branch of Laramie Creek. As we prepared to encamp, we observed the aslies of a fire, the footprints of men and horses, and other indications that a party had been upon the spot not many days before. Having secured our horses for the night, Raymond and I sat down and lighted our pipes, my companion, who had spent his; whole life in the Indian COlinfrV. hazarniinor vai'i'^'io rrtniani-ttfaa na 4-n *K^.».-~.l J -, , . j_, T — i , j.,5 ,^.^., ._^.,-, „,,-, ^[} flic injniiuvia ixiiti character of our predecessors. Soon after, we were joined by the THE EUROPEAN AND THE INDIAN. 119 reproach. The Indian would look with equal scorn on those, who, buried in useless lore, are blind and deaf to the great world of nature. Indian, who, meantime, had been prow inf? al)out the place Raymond asked what discovery he had made. He answered that the party were friendly, and timt they consisted of eiglit men, both whites and Indians, several of whom he named, affirm- iiig that he knew them well. To an inquiry how he gained his information, he would make no intelligible reply. On the next day, reaching Fort Laramie, a post of the American Fur Com- pany, we found that he was correct in every particular— a cir- cumstance the more remarkable, as he had been with us for three weeks, and could have had no other means of knowledge than we ourselves. m >t\ : : I . i t Li I Yi CHAPTER VI. THE ENGLISH TAKE POSSESSION OF THE WESTERN POSTS. The war was over. The plains around Montreal were dotted with the white tents of three victorious armies, and the work of conquest was complete. Canada, with all her dependencies, had yielded to the British crown ; but it still remained to carry into full effect the terms of the surrender and take possession of those western out- posts, where the lilies of France had not as yet descended from the flagstaff. The execution of this task, neither an easy nor a safe one, was assigned to a provincial officer, Major Robert Rogers. Rogers was a native of New Hampshire. He commanded a body ot provincial rangers, and stood in high repute as a partisan offioer. Putnam and Stark were his associates ; and it was in this woodland warfare that the former achieved many of those startling adventures and hair- breadth escapes which have made his name familiar at every New England fireside. Rogers' Rangers, half hunters, half woodsmen, trained in a discipline of their own, and armed, like Indians, with hatchet, knife, and gun, were employed in a service of peculiar hardship. Their chief theatre of action was the mountainous region of Lake George, the debatable ground between the hostile forts of Ticonderoga and Crown Point. The de'3pest re- cesses of these romantic solitudes had heard the French and Indian yell, and the answering shout of the hardy New England men. In summer, they passed down the lake in whale-boats or canoes, or threaded the pathways of the woods in single file, like the savages themselves. 120 ROGERS' RANGERS. 121 In wix.cjr, they journeyed through the swamps on snow- slioes, skated ahjng the frozen surface of the lake, and bivouacked at night among the snow-drifts. They inttu-- cepted French messengers, encounttM-ed French scouting parties, and carried off prisoners from under the very walls of Ticonderoga. Their hardships and adventures, their marches and countermarclies, their fretiuent skir- mishes and midwinter battles, had made them famous throughout America ; and though it was the fashion of the day to sneer at the effort.^ of provincial troops, the name of Rogers' Rangers was never mentioned but with honor. Their commander was a man tall and \ ''vorous in per- son and rough in feature. He was versed in all the arts of woodcraft, sagacious, prompt, and resolute, yet so cau- tious withal that he sometimes incurred the unjust charge of cowardice. His mind, naturally active, was by no means uncultivated, and his books and unpublished letters bear witness that his style as a writer was not con- temptible. But his vain, restless, and grasping spirit, and more than doubtful honesty, proved the ruin of an enviable reputation. Six years after the expedition of which I am about to speak, he was tried by a court- martial for a meditated act of treason, the surrender of P'ort Michillimackinac into uie hands of the Spaniards, who were at that time masters of Upper Louisiana. N'ot long after, if we may trust his own account, he passed over to the Barbary States, entered the service of the Dey of Algiers, and fought two battles under his banners. At the opening of the war of independence, he returned to his native country, where he made professions of patriotism, but was strongly suspected by many, Including Washing- ton himself, of acting the part of a spy. In fact, he soon openly espoused the British cause, and received a colonel's commission from the crown. His services, however, proved of little consequence. In 1778, he was proscribed and banished, under the act of New Hampshire, and the remainder of his life was passed in such obscurity ■ ■'J I '1 n 122 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. that it is difficult tc determine when and where he died.* On the twelfth of September, 1760, Rogers, then at the height of his reputation, received orders from Sir Jeffrey Amherst to ascend the lakes with a detachment of rangers, and take possession, in the name of his Britannic Majesty, of Detroit, Michillimackinac, and other western posts in- cluded in the late capitulation. He left Montreal, on the following day, with two hundred rangers, in fifteen whale boats. They passed the chapel of St. Anne's, where Canadian voyageurs, bound for the north-west, received absolution and paid their votive offerings. Stemming the surges of La Chine and the Cedars, they left behind them the straggling hamlet which bore the latter name, and formed at that day the western limit of Canadian settle- ment. They gained Lake Ontario, skirted its northern shore, amid rough and boisterous weather, and crossing at its western extremity, reached Fort Niagara on the first of October. Carrying their boats over the portage, they launched once more above the cataract, and slowly pur- sued their voyage, while Rogers, with a few attendants, hastened on in advance to Fort Pitt, to deliver despatches, with which he was charged, to General Monkton. This errand accomplished, he rejoined his command at Presqu'- * An engraved full-length portrait of Rogers was published in London in 1776. He is represented as a tall, strong man, dressed in the costume of a ranger, with a powder-horn slung at his side, a gun resting in the hollow of his arm^ and a countenance by no means prepossessing. Behind him, at a little distance, stand his Indian followers. The steep mountain called Rogers' Slide, near the northern end of Lake George, derives its name from the tradition that, during the French war, being pursued by a party of Indians, he slid on snowshoes down its precipitous front, for more than a thousand feet, to the frozen la- o below. On beholding the achievement, the Indians, as well they might, believed him under the protection of the Great Spirit, and gave over the chase. The story seems unfounded ; yet it was not far from this moun- tain that the rangeis fought one of their most desperate winter battles against a force of many times their number. MEETING OF ROGERS AND PONTIAC. 123 Isle about the end of the month, and the whole proceeded together along the southern margin of Lake Erie The season was far advanced. The wind was chill, the lake was stormy, and the woods on shore were tinged with the fadmg hues of autumn. On the seventh of November they reached the mouth of Cayahoga River, the present site of Cleveland. No body of troops und. r the British flag had ever before advanced so far. The day was dull and ramy, and resolving to rest until the weather should miprove, Rogers ordered his men to prepare their en- campmen in the neighboring forest. The place has seen strange changes since that day. A youthful city has usurped the spot where the flsh-hawk and the eagle, the wolf and the bear, then reigned with undisputed masiery. hoon after the arrival of the rangers, a party of In- dian chiefs and warriors entered the camp. They pro- c aimed themselves an embassy from Pontiac, ruler of all that country, and directed, in his name, that the English .nould advance no farther until they had had an iSter- lTtT.1 hpf '^?f f ^'^^^'" ^"^ ''^''^^y '^^'^ -t hand. In tiuth, before the day closed, Pontiac himself appeared ; and It IS here for the first time, that this remarkable man htands forth distinctly on the page of history. He greeted Kogers with the haughty demand, what was his business in that country, and how he dared enter it without his permission Rogers informed him that the French were cleteated, that Canada had surrendered, and that he was on his way to take possession of Detroit, and restore a general peace to white men and Indians alike. Pontiac listened with attention, but only replied that he should stand in the path of the English until morning. Having inquired if the strangers were in need of anything which nilTfTi 7 T^^ "'^"'^' ^' ^^'^^^^^^' ^^*h his chiefs, at ni^nttall, to his own encampment ; while the English ill at ease and suspecting treachery, stood well on their guard throughout the night. In the morning, Pontiac returned to the camp with His attendant chiefs, and made his reply to Rogers' speech •a l( . ,ii !'j It'l 124 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. •«■ ■ w of the previous day. He was willing, he said, to live at peaee with tlui Englisli, and suffer them to remain in his country as long as they treat(;(l him with due respect and deference. The Indian (chiefs and provincial officers smoked the cnilumet together, and perfect harmony seemed estsihlished between them. Up to this time, Pontiac had been, in word and deed, the fast ally of the French ; but it is easy to discern the niotives that imiielled him to renounce his old adherence. The American forest mivv.v produced a man more shrewd, politic, and ambitious. Ignorant as he was of what was passing in the world, he could clearly see that the French power was on the wane, and he knew his own interest too well to prop a falling eause. By making friends of the Knglisl , he hoped to gain powerful allies, who would aid his ambitioi,is projects, and give him an increased in- fluemfe over the tribes; and he flattered himself that the new-(H)mers would treat him with the same studied re- spect which the French had always observed. In this, and all his otln^r expet^tjitions of advantage from the Eng-' lish, he was doomed to disaiipointment. A cold storm of rain set in, and the rangers were detiiined some days in their encampment. During this time, Rogers had several interviews with Pontiac, and was constrained to admire the native vigor of his intellect, no less than the singular control which he exercised over those around him. On the twelfth of November, the detachment was again in motion, and within a few days, they had reached the western end of Lake Erie. Here they heard that the Detroit Indians were in arms against tliem, and that four hundred warriors lay in ambush at the entrance of the river to cut them off. But the powerful influence of Pontiac was exerted in behalf to his new friends. The warriors abandoned their design, and the rangers con- tinued their progress towards Detroit, now within a short distance. In the mean time, Lieutenant Brehm had been sent THE RANGER8 AT DETROIT. 125 lorward with a letter to Captain Beletre, the commandant at Detroit, informing him that Canada had capitulated, that his garrison was included in the capitulation, and that an JLiiglish detachment was approaching to relieve it 1 he frenchman, in great wl-ath at the tidings, disregarded the message as an informal communication, and resolved to keep a hostile attitude to the last. He did his hest to rouse the fury of the Indians. Among other devices, he displayed upon a pole, before the yelling multitude, the eftigy of a crow pecking a man's lu.ad, the crow represen- tmg himself, and the head, observes liogers, "being meant for my own." Ail his efforts were unavailing, and his faithless allies showed unequivocal symptoms of defection m the hour of need. Rogers had now entered the mouth of the River De troit, whence he sent forward Captain Campbell with a copy of the capitulation, and a letter from the Marquis de Vaudreuil, directing that the place should be given up 111 accordance in ;th the terms agreed upon between him and General Amherst. Beletre was forced to yield and with a very ill grace declared himself and his garrison at the disposal of the English commander. Tlie whale-boats of the rangers moved slowly upwards between the low banks of the Detroit, until at length the green uniformity of marsh and forest was relieved by the Canadian houses, which began to appear on either bank the outskirts of the secluded and isolated settlement' before them, on the right side, they could see the village ot the Wyandots, and on the left the clustered lodges of the Pottawattamies, while, a little beyond, the flag of 1^ ranee was flying for the last time above the bark roofs and weather-beaten palisades of the little fortified town The rangers landed on the opposite bank, and pitehed their tents upon a meadow, while two officers, with a small detachment, went across the river to take possession of the place. In obedience to their summons, the French garrison defilpfl nnnn fha n1«i" -^^^^ i-^j j '^ • mi ^ , ^ I'ltiixx, «ii,A iiiiu uuvvji tneir arms. i ho Jleur de lis was lowered from the flagstaff, and the I ^; If6 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. Jfcli Mill.' cross of St. George rose aloft in its place, while seven hundred Indian warriors, lately the active allies of France, greeted the sight with a burst of triumphant yells. The Canadian militia were next called together and disarmed. The Indians looked on with amazement at their obsequious behavior, quite at a loss to understand why so many men should humble themselves before so few. Nothing is more effective in gaining the respect, or even attachment, of Indians than a display of power. The savage spectators conceived the loftiest idea of English prowess, and were beyond measure astonished at the forbearance of the con- querors in not killing their vanquished enemies on the spot. It was on the twenty-ninth of November, 1760, that Detroit fell into the hands of the English. The garrison were sent as prisoners down the lake, but the Canadian inhabitants were allowed to retain their farms and houses, on condition of swearing allegiance to the British crown! An officer was sent southward to take possession of the forts Miami and Ouatanon, which guarded the communi- cation between Lake Erie and the Ohio, while Rogers him- self, with a small party, proceeded northward to relieve the French garrison of Michillimackinac. The storms and gathering ice of Lake Huron forced him back without accomplishing his object, and Michillimackinac, with the three remoter posts of St. Marie, Green Bay, and St. Joseph, remained for the time in the hands of the French. During the next season, howevar, a detachment of the 60th regiment, then called the Royal Americans, took possession of them; and nothing now remained within the power of the French except the few posts and set- tlements on the Mississippi and the Wabash, not in- cluded in the capitulation of Montreal. The work of conquest was consummated. The fertile wilderness beyond the Alleghanies, over which France had claimed sovereignty,— that boundless forest, with its tracery of interlacing streams, which, like veins and ar- teries, gave it life and nourishment,— had passed into the THE CONQUEST CONSUMMATED. 127 hands of her rival. It was by a few insignificant forts, separated by oceans of fresh water and uncounted leagues of forest, that the two great European powers, France first, and now England, endeavored to enforce their claims to this vast and wild domain. There is something ludi- crous in the disparity' between the importance of the pos- session and the slenderness of the force employed to maintain it. A region embracing so many thousand miles of surface was consigned to the keeping of some five or six hundred men. Yet the force, small as is was, ap- peared adequate to its object, for there seemed no enemy to contend with. The hands of the French were tied by the capitulation, and little apprehension was felt from the red inhabitants of the woods. The lapse of two years was enough to show how complete and fatal was thu mistake. CHAPTER VII. ANGER OF THE INDIANS. THE CONSPIRACY. The country was scarcely transferred to the English when smothered murmurs of discontent began to be audible among the Indian tribes. From the head of the Potomac to Lake Superior, and from the AUeghanies to the Mississippi, in every wigwam and hamlet of the forest, a deep-rooted hatred of the English increased with rapid growth. Nor is this to be wondered at. We have seen with what sagacious policy the French had labored to ingratiate themselves witli the Indians ; and the slaughter of the Monongahela, with the horrible devastation of the western frontier, the outrages perpetrated at Oswego, and the massacre at Fort William Henry, bore witness to the success of their efforts. Even the Dela wares and Shawanoes, the faithful allies of William Penn, had at length been seduced by their blandishments ; and the Iroquois, the ancient enemies of Canada, had half for- gotten their former hostility, and well-nigh taken part against the British colonists. The remote nations of the west had also joined in the war, descending in their canoes for hundreds of miles, to fight against the enemies of France. All these tribes entertained towards the Enghsh that rancorous enmity which an Indian always feels against those to whom he has been opposed in war. Under these circumstances, it behoved the English to use the utmost care in their conduct towards the tribes. But even when the conflict with France was iippending, and the alliance with the Indians of the last importance,' v...^ ..„u iitciLv-u Liicm wiLu iiiuiuurence ana neglect. DISORDERS OF THE FUR-TRADE. 120 They were not likely to adopt a different course now that tiieir friendship seemed a matter of no consequence. In truth, the intentions of the English were soon apparent. In the zeal for retrenchment, which prevailed after the close of hostilities, the presents which it had always been customary to give the Indians, at stated intervals, were either withheld altogether, or doksd out with a niggardly and reluctant hand; while, to make the matter worse, the agents and officers of government often appropriated the presents to themselves, and afterwards sold them at an exorbitant price to the Indians. When the French luid possession of the remote forts, they were accustomed, with a wise liberality, to supply the surrounding Indians with guns, ammunition, and clothing, until the latter had forgotten the weapons and garments of their forefathers, and depended on the white men for support. The sudden withholding of these supplies was, therefore, a grievous calamity. Want, suffering, and death were the conse- quences, and this cause alone would have been enough to produce general discontent. But, unhappily, other griev- ances were superadded. The English fur-trade had never been well regulated, and it was now in a worse condition than ever. Many of the traders, and those in their employ, were ruffians of the coarsest stamp, who vied with each other in rapacity, violence, and profligacy. They cheated, cursed, and plun-' dered the Indians, and outraged their families ; offering, when compared with the French traders, who were under better regulation, a most unfavorable example of the character of their nation. The officers and soldiers of the garrisons did their full part in exciting the general resentment. Formerly, when the warriors came to the forts, they had been welcomed by the French with attention and respect. The incon- venience which their presence occasioned had been dis- regarded, and their peculiarities overlooked. But now thev were reppived with nnlH lr>oiro or>ri v,o^r.}, — .^^c. £^ - the officers, and with oaths, menaces, and sometimes 1 ( m ; i I m '■'I < i Mi m| iil '< n iiinnm 130 THE CONSHRACY OF PONTIAC. blows, from the reckless and brutal soldiers. When, after their troublesome and intrusive fas'uon, they were lounging everywhere about the fort, or lazily reclining in the shadow of the walls, they were met with muttered ejaculations of im[)atience or abrupt orders to depart, en- forced, perhaps, by a touch from the but of a sentinel's nuiskct. These marks of contempt were unspeakably galling to their haughty spirit. Hut what most contributed to the growing discontent of the tribes was the intrusion of settlers upon their lands, at all times a fruitful source of Indian hostility. Its effects, it is true, could only be felt by those whose country bordered upon the English settlements ; but among these were the most powerful and influential of the tribes. The Dela wares and Shawanoes, in particular, had by this time been roused to the highest pitch of exasperation. Their best lands had been invaded, and all remonstrance had been fruitless. They viewed with wrath and fear the steady progress of the white man, whose settlements had passed the Susquehanna, and were fast extending to the Alleghanies, eating away the forest like a spreading canker. The anger of the Delawares was abundantly shared by their ancient conquerors, the Six Nations. The threatened occupation of Wyoming by settlers from Con- necticut gave great umbrage to the confederacy.* The Senecas were more especially incensed at English intru- sion, since, from their position, they were farthest removed, from the soothing influence of Sii' William Johnson, and most exposed to the seductions of the French, while the Mohawks, another member of the confederacy, were justly alarmed at seeing the better part of their lands patented out without their consent. Some Christian Indians of the Oneida tribe, in the simplicity of their hearts, sent an earnest petition to Sir William Johnson, that the Eng- lish forts within the limits of the Six Nations might be 1763, MS. Letter— Hamilton to Amherst, May 10, 1761. SINISTER MOVEMENTS OF THE FRENCH 131 removed, or, as the petition expresses it, kicked out of the way.* The discontent of the Indians gave great satisfaction to the French, who saw in it an assurance of safe and bloody vengeance on their conquerors. Canada, it is true, was gone beyond hope of recovery ; but they still might hope to revenge its loss. Interest, moreover, as well as passion, prompted them to inflame the resentment of the Indians ; for most of the inhabitants of the P'rench settlements upon the lakes and the Mississippi were engaged in the fur-trade, and, fearing the English as formidable rivals, they would gladly have seen them driven out of the coun- try. Traders, habitans, coureurs des bois, and all other classes of this singular population, accordingly dispersed themselves among the villages of the Indians, or held councils with them in the secret places of uie woods, urg- ing them to take up arms against the English. They ex- hibited the conduct of the latter in its worst light, and spared neither misrepresentation nor falsehood. They told their excited hearers that the English had formed a deliberate scheme to root out the whole Indian race, and, with that design, had already begun to hem them in with settlements on the one hand, and a chain of forts on the other. Among other atrocious plans for their destruction, they had instigated the Cherokees to attack and destroy the tribes of the Ohio valley. These groundless calumnies found ready belief. The French declared, in addition, that the King of France had of late years fallen asleep ; * " We are now left in Peace, and have nothing to do but to plant our Corn, Hunt the wild Beasts, smoke our Pipes, and mind Religion. But as these Forts, which are built among us, disturb our Peace, & are a great hurt to Religion, because some of our Warriors are foolish, & some of our Brother Soldiers don't fear God, we therefore desire that these Forts may be pull'd down, & kick'd out of the way." At a conference at Philadelphia, in A.ugust, 1761, an Iroquois smnViom oairl ''TXT*:* irf^ii^ T>-^n*-U-^^-^ ^* AU- ikT^i?. !..,.. CTtvSvt., 77 c, jtritt j_ri.Dl;incil \Ji. Mio SUVUU X'HU.LIUnS, Ul'tJ penned up like Hoggs. There are Forts all around us, and there- fore we are apprehensive that Death is coming upon us." inBpH^Rf J I i ^*' '"\ il't ' i! 132 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. .'( i IT ; WW that, during his slumbers, the English had seized upon Canada ; but that he was now awake again, and that his armies were advanciug up the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, to drive out the intruders from the country of their red children. To these fabrications was added the more substantial encouragement of arms, ammunition, clothing, and provisions, which the French trading com- panies, if not the officers of the crown, distributed with a liberal hand. The fierce passions of the Indians, excited by their wrongs, real or imagined, and exasperated by the repre- sentations of the French, were yet farther wrought upon by influences of another kind. A prophet rose among the Dela wares. This man may serve as a counterpart to the famous Shawanoe prophet, who figured so conspic- uously in the Indian outbreak under Tecumseh, imme- diately before the wkr with England in 1812. Many other parallel instances might be shown, as the great suscep- tibility of the Indians to religious and superstitious im- pressions renders the advent of a prophet among them no very rare occurrence. In the present instance, the in- spired Delaware seems to have been rather an enthusiast than an impostor; or perhaps he combined both char- acters. The objects of his mission were not wholly polit- ical. By means cf certain external observances, most of them sufficiently frivolous and absurd, his disciples were to strengthen and Durify their natures, and make them- selves acceptable U the Great Spirit, whose messenger he proclaimed himself to be. He also enjoined them to lay aside the weapons and clothing which they received from the white men, and return to the primitive life of their ancestors. By so doing, and by strictly observing his other precepts, tho tribes would soon be restored to their ancient greatness and power, and be enabled to drive out the white men wlio infested their territory. The prophet had many followers. Indians came from far and near, and gathered tog3ther in large encampments to listen to his exhortations. His fame spread even to the nations of PREMATURE PLOTS. 133 the northern lakes; but though his disciples followed most of his injunctions, flinging away flint and steel, and making copious use of emetics, with other observances equally troublesome, yet the requisition to abandon the use of firearms was too inconvenient to be complied with. With so many causes to irritate their restless and war- like spirit, it could not be supposed that the Indians would long remain quiet. Accordingly, in the summer of the year 1761, Captain Campbell, then commanding at Detroit, received information that a deputation of Seaecas had come to the neighboring village of the Wyandots for the purpose of instigating the latter to destroy him and his garrison. On farther inquiry, the plot proved to be general, and Niagara, Fort Pitt, and other posts, were to share the fate of Detroit. Campbell instantly despatched messengers to Sir Jeffrey Amherst, and the commanding officers of the different forts ; and, by this timely discov- ery, the conspiracy was nipped in the bud. During the following summer, 1762, another similar design was de- tected and suppressed. They proved but the precursors of a tempest. Within, two years after the discovery of the first plot, a sc'ieme was matured greater in extent, deeper and more comprehensive in design— such a one as was never, before or since, conceived or executed by a North American Indian. It was determined to attack all the English forts upon the same day ; then, having de- stroyed their garrisons, to turn upon the defenceless frontier, and ravage and lay waste the settlements, until, as many of the Indians fondly believed, the English should all be driven into the sea, and the country restored to its primitive owners. It is difficult to determine which tribe was first to raise the cry of war. There were many who might have done so, for all the savages in the ])ackwoods were ripe for an outbreak, and the movement seemed almost simultaneous. The Delawares and Senecas were the most incensed, and Kiashuta, chief of the latter, was perhaps foremost to apply the torch ; but, if this were the case, he touched fire 134 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC !l to materials already on the point of igniting. It belonged to a greater chief than he to give method and order to what would else have been a wild burst of fury, and to convert desultory attacks into a formidable and protracted war. But for Pontiac, the whole might have ended in a few troublesome inroads upon the frontier, and a little whooping and yelling under the walls of Fort Pitt. Pontiac, as already mentioned, was principal chief of the Ottawas. The Ottawas, Ojibwas, and Pottawat- tamies, had long been united in a loose kind of confeder- acy, of which he was the virtual head. Over those around him his authority was almost despotic, and his power ex- tended far beyond the limits of the three united tribes. His influence was great among all the nations of the Illi- nois country ; while, from the sources of the Ohio to those of the Mississippi, apd, indeed, to the farthest boundaries of the wide- spread Algonquin race, his name was known and respected. The fact that Pontiac was born the son of a chief would in no degree account for the extent of his power ; for, among Indians, many a chiefs son sinks back into insig- nificance, while the offspring of a common warrior may succeed to his place. Among all the wild tribes of the continent, personal merit is indispensable to gaining or preserving dignity. Courage, resolution, wisdom, address, and eloquence are sure passports to distinction. With all these Pontiac was preeminently endowed, p.nd it was chiefly to them, urged to their highest activity by a vehe- ment ambition, that he owed his greatness. His intellect was strong and capacious. He possessed commanding energy and force of mind, and in subtlety and craft could match the best of his wily race. But, though capable of acts of lofty magnanimity, he was a thorough savage, with a wider range of intellect than those around him, but sharing all their passions and prejudices, their aerce- ness and treachery. Yet his faults were the faults of his race; and thev cannot eclitise his TiAmof rt n Q 1 1 4-1 OCT great powers and heroic virtues of his mind. His mem GLOOMY PROSPECTS OF THE INDIANS. 135 ory is still cherished among the remnants of many Algonquin tribes, and the celebrated Tecumseh adopted him for his model, proving himself no unworthy imi- tator.* Pontiac was now about fifty years old. Until Major Rogers came into the country, he had been, from motives probably both of interest and inclination, a firm friend of the French. Not long before the Frencli war broke out, he had saved the garrison of Detroit from the imminent peril of an attack from some of the discontented tribes of the north. During the war, he had fought on the side of France. It is said that he commanded the Ottawas at the memorable defeat of Braddock ; but, at all events, he was treated with much honor by the French ofBcers, and received especial marks of esteem from the Marquis of Montcalm, t We have seen how, when the tide of affairs changed, the subtle and ambitious chief trimmed his bark to the current, and gave t]ie hand of friendship to the English. That he was disappointed in their treatment of him, and in all the hopes that he had formed from their alliance, is sufficiently evident from one of his speeches. A new light soon began to dawn upon his untaught but powerful ^ Drake, Life of Tecumseh, 138. Several tribes, the Miamis, Sacs, and others, have claimed con- nection with the great chief ; but it is certain that he was, by adoption at least, an Ottawa. Henry Conner, formerly govern- ment interpreter for the northern tribes, declared, on the faith of Indian tradition, that ht -as born among the Ottawas of an Ojibwa mother, a circumstance which proved an advantage to him by increasing his influence over both tribes. An Ojibwa Indian told the writer that some portion of his power was to be ascribed to his being a chief of the Metai, a magical association among the Indians of the lakes, in which character he exerted an influence on the superstition of his followers. t The venerable Pierre Chouteau, of St. Louis, remembered to have seen Pontiac, a few days before the death of the latter, at- tirfid in f}l« r>ntiTn1afQ 11 nif /->».»-« /~^f o 1?>.<^v«^U ^-Oi^ Ui-i. i-_ j 1 . 1 .-^t Ji8v,-j, iti i xtrii-wii vriiiv;ci, v. iiiuii iiilU. UUt'II given him by the Marquis of Montcalm not long before the battle on the Plains of Abraham. ;!' 136 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. mind, and he saw the altered posture of affairs under its true aspect. It was a momentous and gloomy crisis for the Indian race, for never before had they been exposed to such press- ing and imminent danger. With the downfall of Canada, the Indian tribes had sunk at once from their position of power and importance. Hitherto the two rival European nations had kept each other in cheek upon the American continent, and the Indian tribes had, in some measure, held the balance of power between them. To conciliate their good will and gain their alliance, to avoid offending them by injustice and encroachment, was the policy both of the French and English. But now the face of affairs was changed. The English had gained an undisputed ascendency, and the Indians, no longer important as allies, were treated as ruere barbarians, who might be trampled upon with impunity. Abandoned to their own feeble resources and divided strength, the tribes must fast recede, and dwindle away before the steady progress of the colo- nial power. Already their best hunting-grounds were in- vaded, and from the eastern ridges of the Alleghanies they might see, from far and near, the smor : of the set- tlers' clearings, rising in tall columns from the dark-green bosom of the forest. The doom of the race was sealed, and no human power could avert it ; but they, in their ignorance, believed otherwise, ^^nd vainly thought that, by a desperate effort, they might yet uproot and over- throw the growing strength of their destroyers. It would be idle to suppose that the great mass of the Indians understood, in its full extent, the danger which threatened their race. With tliem, the war was a mere outbreak of fury, and they turned against their enemies with as little reason or forecast as a panther when he leaps at the throat of the hunter. Goaded by Avrongs and indignities, they struck for revenge, and relief from the evil of the moment. But !:he mind of Pontiac could c>abracc a wider and deeper view. The peril of the times was unfolded in its full extent before him, and he resolved DESIGNS OF PONTIAC. 137 to unite the tribes in one grand effort to avert it He did not like many of his people, entertain the absurd idea that the Indians, by their unaided strength, could drive the English into the sea. He adopted the only plan that was consistent with reason, that of restoring the French ascendency in the west, and once more opposing a check to British encroachment. With views like these, he lent a greedy ear to the plausible falsehoods of the Canadians who assured him that the armies of King Louis were al' ready advancing to recover Canada, and that the French and their red brethren, fighting side by side, would drive the English dogs back within their own narrow limits Revolving these thoughts, and remembering moreover that his own ambitious views might be advanced by the hostilities he meditated, Pontiac no longer hesitated Re- venge, ambition, and patriotism, wrought upon him alike and he resolved on war. At the close of the year 1762 he sent out ambassadors to the different nations Thf y visited the country of the Ohio and its tributaries, passed northward to the region of the upper lakes, and the wild borders of the River Ottawa ; and far southward towards the mouth of the Mississippi.* Bearing with them the war-belt of wampum,t broad and long, as the importance * MS. Letter— M. D'Abbadie to M. Neyon, 1764. f Wampum was an article much in use among many tribes not only for ornament, but for the graver purposes of councils treaties, and embassies. In ancient times, it consisted of small sl)e Is, or fragments of shells, rudely perforated, and strung to- getlier ; but more recently, it was manufactured by the white men from the inner portions of certain marine and fresh water sue is. In shape, tlie grains or beads resembled small pieces of broken pipe-stem, and were of various sizes and colors black purple, and white. When used for ornaments, they were ar- ranged fancifully in necklaces, collars, and embroidery ; but when employed for public purposes, they were disposed in a great variety of patterns and devices, which, to the minds of the Indians, had all the significance of hieroglyphics. An Indian orator, at everv clause of his snoAph riaiitTar^ri « u^u *_: j> wampum, varying in size, according to the importance of what he had said, and, by its figures and coloring, so arranged as to ^ I I \4 r ij ' >e' 138 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. T 'M 'i'i ht'i 'I I , ki II I': of the message demanded; and the tomahawk stained red, in token of war ; they went from camp to camp, and village to village. Wherever they appeared, the sachems and old men assembled, to hear the words of the great Pontiac. Then the head chief of the embassy flung down the tomahawk on the ground before them, and holding the war-belt in his hand, delivered, with vehement ges- ture, word for word, the speech with which he was charged. It was heard everywhere with approbation ; the belt was accepted, the hatchet snatched up, and the assembled chiefs stood pledged to take part in the war. The blow was to be struck at a certain time in the month of May following, to be indicated by the changes of the moon. The tribes were to rii^e together, each destroying the Eng- lish garrison in its neighborhood, and then, with a general rush, the whole were to turn against the settlements of the frontier. The tribes, thus banded together against the English, comprised, with a few unimportant exceptions, the whole Algonquin stock, to whom were united the Wyandots, the Senecas, and several tribes of the lower Mississippi. The Senecas were the only members of the Irocjuois con- perpetuate the remembrance of his words. These belts were carefully stored up like written documents, and it was generally the office of some old man to interpret their meaning. When a wampum belt was sent to summon the tribes to join in war, its color was always red or black, while the prevailing color of a peace-belt was white. Tobacco was sometimes used on such occasions as a substitute for wampum, since in their councils the Indians are in the habit of constantly smoking, and tobacco is thei-efore taken as the emblem of deliberation. With the tobacco or the belt of wampum, presents are not un fre- quently sent to conciliate the good will of the tribe whose alli- ance is sought. In the summer of the year 1846, when the west- ern bands of the Dahcotah were preparing to go in concert against their enemies the Crows, the chief who was at the head of the design, and in whose village the writer was an inmate, impoverished himself by sending most of his horses as presents to the chiefs of the surrounding villages. On this occasion, tobacco was the token borne by the messengers, as wampum is not in use among the tribes of that region. DISSIMULATION OF THE INDIANS. 139 federacy who joined in the league, the rest being kept by the influence of Sir William Johnson, whose utmost ex- ertions, however, were barely sufficient to allay their irritation. While thus on the very eve of an outbreak, the Indians concealed their design with the deep dissimulation of their race. The warriors still lounged about the forts, with calm, impenetrable faces, begging as heretofore for tobacco, gunpowder, and whiskey. Now and then, some slight intimation of danger would startle the garrisons from their security, and an English trader, coming in from the Indian villages, would report that, from their manner and behavior, he suspected them of mischievous designs. Some scoundrel half-breed would be heard boasting in his cups that before next summer he would have English hiiir to fringe his hunting-frock. On one occasion, the plot was nearly discovered. Early in March, 1763, Ensign Holmes, commanding at Fort Miami, was told by a friendly Indian, that the warriors in the neigh- boring village had lately received a war-belt, with a message urging them to destroy him and his garrison, and that this they were preparing to do. Holmes called the Indians together, and boldly charged them with their design. They did as Indians on such occasions have often done, confessed their fault with much apparent con- trition, laid the blame on a neighboring tribe, and pro- fessed eternal friendship to their brethren the English. Holmes writes to report his discovery to Major Gladwyn, who, in his turn, sends the information to Sir Jeffrey Amherst, expressing his opinion that there has been a general irritation among the Indians, but that the affair will soon blow over, and that, in the neighborhood of his own post, the savages were perfectly tranquil. Within cannon shot of the deluded officer's palisades, was the village of Pontiac himself, the arch enemy of the English, and prime mover in the nlot. With the approach of spring, the Indians, coming in from their wintering grounds, began to appear in small 'I , i1! :; I i 140 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. parties about the different forts ; but now they seldom entered them, encamping at a little distance in the woods. They were fast pushing their preparations for the medi- tated blow, and waiting with stifled eagerness for the appointed hour. 1 n f ' 1 ' I CHAPTER VIII. INDIAN PREPARATION. I INTERRUPT the progress of the narrative to glance for a moment at the Indians in their military capacity, and observe how far they were qualified to prosecute the formidable war into which they were about to plunge. A people living chiefly by the chase, and therefore, of necessity, thinly scattered over a great space, divided into numerous tribes, held together by no strong principle of cohesion, and with no central government to combine their strength, could act with little efficiency against such an enemy as was now opposed to them. Loose and dis- jointed as a whole, the government even of individual tribes, and of their smallest separate communities, was too feeble to deserve the name. There were, it is true, chiefs whose office was in a manner hereditary ; but their authority was wholly of a mortal nature, and enforced by no compulsory law. Their province was to advise, and not to command. Their influence, such as it was, is chiefly to be ascribed to the principle of hero-worships natural to the Indian character, and to the reverence for age, which belongs to a state of society where a patri- archal element largely prevails. It was their office to declare war and make peace ; but when war was declared they had no power to carry the declaration into effect. The warriors fought if they chose to do so ; but if, on the contrary, they preferred to remain quiet, no man could force them to lift the hatchet. The war-chief, vvhose part it was to lead them to battle, was a mere partisan, whom his bravery and exploits had led to dis- 141 [fit ■1 s;'!i::« 142 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. tinction. If he tliought proper, he sang his war-song and (lanced his war-dance, and as many of tlie young men as were disposed to follow him gathered around and en- listed themselves under him. Over these volunteers he had no legal authority, and they could desert him at any moment, with no other penalty than disgrace. When several war-parties, of dift'ert^nt hands or tribes, were united in a common enterprise, their chiefs elected a leader, who was nominally to command the whole ; but unless this leader was a man of high distinction, and endowed with great mental power, his commands were disregarded, and his authority was a cipher. Among his followers was every latent element of discord, pride, jealousy, and ancient half-smothered feuds, ready at any moment to break out, and tear the whole asunder. His warriors would, often desert in bodies ; and many an Indian army, before reaching the enemy's country, has been known to dwindle away until it was reduced to a mere scalping party. To twist a rope of sand would be as easy a task as to form a permanent and effective army of such materials. The wild love of freedom, and impatience of all control, which mark the Indian race, render them utterly intol- erant of military discipline. Partly from their individual character, and partly from this absence of subordination, spring results highly unfavorable to the efficiency of continued and extended military operation. Indian w^arriors, when acting in large masses, are to the last de- gree wayward, capricious, and unstable ; infirm of purpose as a mob of children, and devoid of providence and fore- sight. To provide supplies for a campaign forms no part of their system. Hence the blow must be struck at once, or not struck at all ; and to postpone victory is to insure defeat. It is when acting in small, detached parlies, that the Indian warrior puts forth his energies, and displays his admirable address, endurance, and intrepidity. It is then that he becomes a truly formidable enemy. Fired with the hope of winning scalps, he is stanch as a THE INDIANS AS A MILITARY PEOPLE. 143 bloodhound. No hardship can divert him from his purpose, and no danger subdue his patient and cautious courage. From their inveterate passion for war,' the Indians are always prompt enough to engage in it ; and on the pres- ent occasion, the prevailing irritation afforded ample as- KUiance that they would not remain idle. While there was little risk that they would capture any strong and well-defended fort, or carry any important position, there was, on the other hand, every reason to apprehend wide- spread havoc, and a destructive war of detail. That the war might be carried on with vigor and effect, it was the part of the Indian leaders to work upon the passions of their people, and keep alive the feeling of irritation ; to whet their native appetite for blood and glory, and cheer them on to the attack ; to guard against all that might quench their ardor, or abate their fierceness ; to avoid pitched battles ; never to fight except under advantage ; and to avail themselves of all the aid which surprise, craft, and treachery could afford. The very circumstances which unfitted the Indians for continued and concentrated attack were, in another view, highly advantageous, by preventing the enemy from assailing them with vital effect. It was no easy task to penetrate tangled- woods in search of a foe, alert and active as a lynx, who would seldom stand and fight, whose deadly shot and triumphant whoop were the first and often the last tokens of his presence, and who at the approach of a hostile force would vanish into the black recesses of forests and pine swamps, only to renew his attacks afresh with unabated ardor. There were no forts to capture, no magazines to destroy, and little property to seize upon. No species of warfare could be more perilous and harassing in its prosecution, or less satisfactory in its results. The English colonies at rhis time were but ill fitted to bear the brunt of the impending war. The army which had conquered Canada was now broken up and dissolved ; the provincials were disbanded, and most of the regulars ii^ki ■JiliH "t' ■ -? ■i ^H ■• ifn ^^H ii^^l 1 t n '*^^^^i P 1 1 E lU THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. sent home. A few fragments of regiments, miserably wasted by war and sickness, were just arrived from the West Indies ; and of these, several were already ordered to England, to be discharged. There remained barely troops enough to furnish feeble garrisons for the various forts on the frontier and in the Indian country. At the head of this dilapidated army was Sir Jeffrey Amherst, the able and resolute soldier who had achieved the reduc- tion of Canada. He was a man well fitted for the emer- gency ; cautious, bold, active, farsighted, and endowed witli a singular power of breathing his own energy and zeal into those who served under him. The command could not have been in better hands ; and the results of the war, lamentable as they were, would have been much more disastrous but for his promptness and vigor, and, above all, his judicious selection of those to whom he confided the execution of his orders. While the war was on the eve of breaking out, an event occurred which had afterwards an important effect upon its progress— the signin^ of the treaty of peace at Paris, on the tenth of February, 1763. By this treaty France resigned her claims to the territories east of the Missis- sippi, and that great river now became the western boundary of the British colonial possessions. In portion- mg out her new acquisititions into separate governments England left the valley of the Ohio and the adjacent regions as an Indian domain, and by the proclamation of the seventh of October following, the intrusion of settlers upon these lands was strictly prohibited. Could these just and necessary measures have been sooner adopted, it IS probable that the Indian war might have been pre- vented, or, at all events, rendered less general and violent, for the treaty would have made it apparent that the French could never repossess themselves of Canada, and have proved the futility of every hope which the In- dians entertained of assistance from that quarter, while, at the same time, the royal proclamation would have greatly tended to tranquillize their minds, by removing THE WAR-FEAST-TIIE WAR-DANCE. 145 the chief cause of irritation. Hut the remedy came too late. While the sovereigns of France, England, and Spain, wt ^ signing the treaty at Paris, countless Indian warriors in the American forests were singing the war- song, and whetting their scalping-knives. Throughout the western wilderness, in a hundred camps and villages, were celebrated the savage rites of war. Warriors, women, and children were alike eager and excited ; magicians consulted their oracles, and prepared charms to insure success ; while the war-chief, his body painted black from head to foot, withdrawing from the people, concealed himself among rocks and caverns, or in the dark recesses of the forest. Here, fasting and pray- ing, he calls day and night upon the Great Spirit, con- suiting his dreams, to draw from them auguries of good or evil ; and if, perchance, a vision of the great war-eagle seems to hover over him with expanded wings, he exults in the full conviction of triumph. When a few days have elapsed, he emerges from his retreat, and the people dis- cover him descending from the ^^^oods, and approaching their camp, black as a demon of war, aud shrunken with fasting and vigil. They flock around and listen to his wild harangue. He calls on them to avenge the blood of their slaughtered relatives; he assures them that the (Jreat Spirit is on their side, and that victory is certain. With exulting cries they disperse to their wigwams, to array themselves in the savage decorations of the war- dress. An old man now passes through the camp, and invites the warriors to a feast in the name of the cliief. They gather from all quarters to his wigwam, where they find him seated, no longer covered with black, but adorned with the startling and fantastic blazonry of the war-paint. Those who join in the feast pledge them- selves, by so doing, to follow him against the enemy. The guests seat themselves on the ground, in a circle around the wigwam, and the flesh of dogs is placed in wooden dishes before them, while the chief, though goaded by the pangs of his long, unbroken fast, sits smoking his 10 i 1 1 HI m^ 146 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. '■'■ f III. i ■' ■lir pipe with unmoved countenance, and takes no part in the feast. Night has now closed in, and the rough clearing is il- lumined by the blaze of fires and burning pine knots, cast- ing their deep red glare upon the dusky boughs of the tall surrounding pine-trees, and upon the wild multitude who, fluttering with feathers and bedaubed with paint, have gathered for the celebration of the war-dance. A painted post is driven into the ground, and the crowd form a wide circle around it. The chief leaps into the vacant space, brandishing his hatchet as if rushing upon an enemy, and, in a loud, vehement tone, chants his own exploits and those of his ancestors, enacting the deeds which he describes, yelling the war-whoop, throwing himself into all the postures of actual fight, striking the post as if it ,were an enemy, and tearing the scalp from the head of the imaginary victim. Warrior after warrior follows his example, until the whole assembly, as if fired with sudr' frenzy, rush together into the ring, leaping, stamping, .. . whooping, brandishing knives and hatchets, in the firelight, hacking and stabbing the air, and working themselves into the fury of battle, while at intervals they all break forth into a burst of ferocious yells, which sounds for miles away over the lonely, mid- night forest. In the morning, the warriors prepare to depart. They leave the camp in single file, still decorated in all their finery of paint, feathers, and scalp-locks; and as they enter the woods, the chief fires his gun, the warrior behind follows his example, and the discharges pass in slow suc- cession from front to rear, the salute concluding with a general whoop. They encamp at no great distance from the village, and divest themselves of their much- valued ornaments, which are carried back by the women, who have followed them for this purpose. The warriors pursue their journey, clad in the rough attire 01 tiard service, anvx move silently and stealthily through the forest towards the hapless garrison, or THE INDIAN WAR PARTIES. U7 defencel-S settlement, which they have marked as thek prey. The woods were now filled with war-parties such as this, and soon the first tokens of the approaching tempest began to alarm the unhappy settlers of the frontier. At first, some trader or hunter, weak and emaciated, would come in from the forest, and relate that his companions had been butchered in the Indian villages, and that he alone had escaped. Next succeeded vague and uncertain rumors of forts attacked and garrisons slaughtered ; and soon after, a report gained ground that every post through- out the Indian country had been taken, and every soldier killed. Close upon these tidings came the enemy him- self. The Indian war-parties broke out of the woods like gangs of wolves, murdering, burning, and laying waste, while hundreds of terror-stricken families, abandoning their homes, fled for refuge towards the older settlements, and all was misery and ruin. Passing over, for the present, this portion of the war, we will penetrate at once into the heart of the Indian country, and observe those passages of the conflict which took place under the auspices of Pontiac himself — the siege of Detroit, and the capture of the interior posts and garrisons. ,.. ^^ . 't' n ■ 1 f CHAPTER IX. THE COUNCIL AT THE RIVER ECORCER. To begin the war was reserved by Pontiac ..s his own peculiar privilege. With the first opening of spring his preparations were compU^te. II is light-footed messengers, with their wampum belts and gifts of tobacco, visited many a lonely hunting camp in the gloom of the northern woods, and called chiefs and warriors to attend the gen- eral meeting. The, appointed spot was on the banks of the little River Ecorces, not far from Detroit. Thither went Pontiac himself, with his squaws and his children. Band after band came straggling in from every side, until the meadow was thickly dotted with their slender wig- wams. Here were idle warriors smoking and laughing in groups, or beguiling the lazy hours with gambling, with feasting, or with doubtful stories of their own martial exploits. Here were youthful gallants, bedizened with all the foppery of beads, feathers, and hawk's bells, but held as yet in light esteem, since they had slain no enemy, and taken no scalp. Here also were young dam- sels, radiant with bears' oil, ruddy- with vermilion, and versed in all the arts of forest coquetry ; shrivelled hags, with limbs of wire, and voices like those of screech-owls • and troops of naked children, with small, black, mis- chievous eyes, roaming along the outskirts of the woods. The great Roman historian observes of the ancient Germans, that when summoned to a public meeting, they would lag behind the appointed time in order to show their independence. The remark holds true, and per- xiaps witii greater emphasis, of the Aniericaii Indians ; s and thus it happened, that several days elapsed before the 148 VvT. - SPEECH OF PONTIAC. 149 assembly was complete. In such a motley, concourse of barbarians, where different bands and different tribes were nnistered on one common camping ground, it would need all the art of a prudent leader to prevent their dor- mant jealousies from starting into open strife. No people are more prompt to quarrel, and none more prone, in the fierce excitement of the present, to forget the purpose of the future ; yet, through good fortune, or the wisdom of Pontiac, no rupture occurred ; and at length the last loi- terer appeared, and farther delay was needless. The council took place on the tw^juty-seventh of April. On that morning, several old men, the heralds of the camp, passed to and fro among the lodges, calling the warriors, in a loud voice, to attend the meeting. In accordance with the summons, they came issuing from their cabins— the tall, naked figures of the wild Ojibwas, with quivers slung at their backs, and light war- clubs resting in the hollow of their arms ; Ottawas, wrap- ped close in their gaudy blankets ; Wyandots, fluttering in painted shirts, their heads adorned with feathers, and their leggins garnished with bells. All were soon seated in a wide circle upon the grass, row within row, a grave and silent assembly. Each savage countenance seemed carved in wood, and none could have detected the deep and fiery passions hidden beneath that immovable ex- terior. Pipes with ornamented stems were lighted, and passed from hand to hand. Then Pontiac rose, and walked forward into the midst of the cou' jil According to Canadian tradition, he was not above the ^* iddle height, though his muscular figure was cast in a mould of remarkable symmetry and vigor. His complexion was darker than is usual with his ra3e, and his features, though by no means regular, had a bold and stern expression, while !iis habitual bearing was im- perious and peremptory, like that of a man accustomed to sweep away all opposition by the force of his impetuous will. His ordinary attire was that cf the primitive sav- age—a scanty cincture girt about his loins, and his long, if 4 mB 150 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. M f i bliMik lijiir flowing loosely at his bank ; but on occasions like tliis, he wa.J wont to ai)|)car as betltUMl his i)ow()r and clmractcissind he Ntooci before the council plumed and painted in Mu> lull eostuine of war. Looking round ui)on his wild uuditorH, lie began to Npeak, with fierce gesture, and loud, inipassioncnl voice ; and at every pause, deep guttural i-jaculations of assent and api)roval responded to his words. He inveighed against the arrogance, rapacity, and injustice of the English, and contrasted them with the Frent;!;, whom they had drivtMi from the soil, lie declared that the British connnandant had treated him witii neglect and contempt; that the soldiers of the garrison had foully abused the Indians; and that one of them had struck a foUower of lus own. He represented the danger that would arise from the supremacy of the English. They had expelled the French, and now they only waited for a pretext to turn upon the Indluia and destroy them. Tlicn, holding out a broad b«4t of wamjuun, he told the council that he had received it from their gi-eat father the King of France, in token that he had heard the voice of bis red children; that his slee[) was at an end; and that his great war-canoes would soon sail up the St. Lawrence, to win back Canada, and wreak vengeance on his enemies. The Indians and their French brethren should fight once more side by side, as they had always fought ; they should strike the English as they had struck them niany moons ago, when their great army man^ied down the Mononga- hela, and they had shot them from their ambush, like a tlock of pigeons in the woods. Having roused in his warlike listeners their native thirst t\)r blood and vengeance, he next addressed him- self to their superstition, and told the following tale. Its precise origin is not easy to determir.a. It is possible that the Delaware prophet^ mentioned in a former chapter may have had some part in it; or it might have been the ofTsiriiiig 01 Pontiac's heated imagii-.ition, durhig his period of fasting luid tU'caming. That he deliberately X. A^ ALLEGORY OF THE DELAWARE. 151 invontefi it for the wako of tho effect it would produce, is file hitcst probable concjlusion of all ; iior it evidently pro- (H'cds from the supiu'HtitiouH uiiud of an Indian, brooding upon tiu^ (ivil days in wliieli his lot was cast, and turning tor relief to the inystcirious Author of his being. It is, at id! (ivcuits, a ehara(!teristie speeiinc^n of the Indian legend- ary tales, and, like many of them, bears an all(!goric sig nilieancy. Y(>t he who cmdeavors to interpret an Indian iillegory through all its erratic windings and puerile inconsistencies, has undert.ikciu no easy or enviable task. "A Delaware Indian," said Pontiae, "conceived an eag(!r di^sir(>, to learn wisdom from the Master of Life; but, being ignorant whoiu to find him, he had recourse to fasting, dreaming, and magi(!al incantati(ms. By these means it was reveahul to him that by moving forward in a stiaight, undeviating course, he would reach the abode of the (ireat Spirit. He tnld his purpose to no one, and having provided the e(iuii.!Hents of a hunter, — gun, powder-horn, amnuuiition, and .i kettle for prepar- ing his food — he set forth on his errand. For some time he journeyed on in high hope and confidence. On the evening of the eighth day, he stopped by the side of a brook at the edge of a small prairio, where he began to make ready his evcniing meal, wdien, looking up, he saw three large oixMiings in the woods on the ()i)posite side of the meadow, and thrt^e well-beaten paths which entered them. He was nui(;h surprised; but his wonder in- creased wlu!n, after it had grown dark, the three paths wore more clearly visible than ever. Remembering the important object of his journey, he could neither rest nor sleep ; and, leaving his fire, he crossed the meadow, and entered the largest of the three openings. He had ad- vanc;ed but a short distance into the forest, when a bright flame sprang out of the ground before him, and arrested his steps. In great amazement, he turned back, and entered the second path, where the same wonderful phe- nomenon again encountered him ; and now, in terror and tW w !' -j-^ M ■| u '•!> 1 1 f : ( t 1- ■ i t * ' t II 152 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. W 4) i , *ifl| It ! j 1 1 ^H 156 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. posal of their great leader. His plan was eagerly adopted. Deep, hoarse ejaculations of applause echoed his speech ; and, gathering their blankets around them, the chiefs withdrew to their respective villages, to prepare for the destruction of the unhappy little garrison. 41^ CHAPTER X. DETROIT. To the credulity of mankind each great calamity has its dire prognostics. Signs and portents in the heavens, the vision of an Indian bow, and the figure of a scalp im- printed on the disk of the moon, warned the New England Puritans of impending war. The apparitions passed iiway, and Philip of Mount Hope burst from the forest with his Narragansett warriors. In October, 1762, thick clouds of inky blackness gathered above the fort and set- tlement of Detroit. The river darkened beneath the aw- ful shadows, and the forest was wrapped in double gloom. Drops of rain began to fall, of strong, sulphurous odor, and so deeply colored that the people, it is said, collected and used them for the purpose of writing. A prominent literary and philosophical journal seeks to explain this strange phenomenon on some principle of physical science ; but the simple Canadians held a different faith. Throughout the winter, the shower of black rain was the foremost topic of their fireside talks, and dreary forebod- ings of evil disturbed the breast of many a timorous matron. La Motte Cadillac was the founder of Detroit. In the year 1701, he planted the little military colony, which time has transmuted into a thriving American city. At an earlier date, some feeble efforts had been made to secure the possession of this important pass ; and when La Hon- tan visited the lakes, a small post, called Fort St. Joseph, TT-qa afa 11/1 inn* Tipnr fViP -nrpHPrif. aifp nf T?nrt. rrrnt.irkf Af about this time, the wandering Jesuits made frequent 157 I '- i i 11 i I m 158 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. '.ii ■ i Hi. HojournH upon tlio borders of tho Dotroit, and baptized tbo wavago (ibildron whom they foinid there. Fort St. Joseph was abandoned in the year 1G88. The estal)liHhnuuit of (-adilhu! was dcjstined to a better fate, and soon rose to distinf,nnsh(Ml importance among the western ontposts of Caiuida. Indeed, tlie site was formed by natnre for ])r()si)erity ; and a bad government and a thriftU'ss \m)\)U) eonid not prevent the increase of tlie colony. At tiie close of the French war, as Major Kogers tells us, the i>hi(H'- contained twenty-tive hundred inhab- itsuits. The centre of the si^ttlement was the fortified town, (^irrtnitly calUul tlu^ Fort, to distinguish it from the straggling dwellings along the river banks. It stood on the western margin of tlu^ river, covering a small part of the gronnd now occui)ied by the city of Detroit, and con- tained about a hun(Jri>d houses, com[)actly pressed together, and surrouniUid by a palisade. Hoth above and below the fort, the banks of the stream were lined on both sides with small C'anadian dwellings, extending at various in- tervals for nearly t>ight miles. Each had its garden and its ovchard, and (>ach was enclosed by a fence of rounded pickets. To the soldier or the trader, fresh from the harsh scenery and ambushed perils of the surrounding wilds, the secluded settlement was welcome as an oasis in the desert. The Canadian is usually a happy man. Life sits lightly upon him ; he laughs at its hardships, and soon forgets its sorrows. A lover of roving and adventure, of the frolic and the dance, he is little troubled with thoughts of the past or the future, and little plagued with avarice or ambition. At Detroit, all his propensities found ample scope. Aloof from the world, the simple colonists shared none of its pleasures and excitements, and were free from many of its cares. Nor were luxuries wanting which civilization n\ight have envied them. The forest teemed with game, the marshes with wild fowl, and the rivers with iish. The apples and pears of the old Canadian orchards are even to this day held in esteem. The poorer ifl ITS ORIGIN AND HISTORY. 159 iiilial»itantH mado wino from tlje fruit of the wild grape, wiiicli ^revv profusely in the woods, whih; the wealthi(!r class i)ro(!ured a better (luality froui Montreal, in exchange for the eano(; loads of furs which they sent down with every year. lien*, as elsewhere; in Canada, the long win- ter was a season of so(;ial enjoyment; and wlu;n, in sum- mer and autunni, the traders and voyageurs, the coureurs (/i',H hois and half-bn^eds, gathered from the distant forests of the north-west, the whole settltancnit was alive with frolic gayety, with dancing and feasting, drinking, gaming, and (!arousing. Within the limits of the settlement were three large Indian villagers. On the western shore, a little below the fort, were the; lo(lg(;s of the Pottawattamies ; nciarly op])osite, on the eastern side, was the village of the Wyandots ; and on the same side, two miles higher up, ]*ontlac's band of Ottawas had fixed their abode. The settlers had always maintained the best terms with their savage neighbors. In truth, there was much congeniality bc^tween the red man and the Canadian. Their harmony was sc^ldom broken ; and among the woods and wilds of the northern lakes roamed many a lawless half-breed, the mongrel offspring of intermarriages between the colonists of Detroit and the Indian sejuaws. We liave already seen how, in an evil hour for the Canadians, a party of British troops took possession of Detroit, towards the close of the year 1760. The Brit- ish garrison, consisting partly of regulars and partly of provincial rangers, was now quartered in a well-built range of barrac'ks within the town or fort. The latter, as already mentioned, contained about a hundred small houses. Its form was nearly square, and the palisade whi(;h surrounded it was about twenty-five feet high. At each corner was a wooden bastion, and a block-house was erected over each gateway. The houses were small, chiefly built of wood, and roofed with bark or a thatch of straw. The streets also were extremely narrow, though a wide passage way, known as the cheniin du ronde^ oUr- ! 160 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC. * M rounded the town between the houses and the palisade Besides the barracks, the only public buildings were a council-house and a rude little church. The garrison consisted of a hundred and twenty soldiers, with about forty fur-traders and eti^af/es ; but the latter, as well as the peaceful Canadian inhabitants of the place, could little be trusted, in the event of an Indian outbreak. Two small armed schooners, the Beaver and the Gladwyn, lay anchored in the stream, and several light pieces of artillery were mounted in the bastions. Such was Detroit— a place whose defences could have opposed no resistance to a civilized enemy; and yet, situated as it was, far removed from the hope of speedy succor, it could only rely, in the terrible struggles that awaited it, upon its own slight strength and feeble re- sources. Standing on the water bastion of Detroit, the land- scape that prtisented itself might well remain impressed through life upon the memory. The river, about half a mile wide, almost washed the foot of the stockade ; and either bank was lined with the white Canadian cottages. The joyous si)arkling of the bright blue water ; the green luxuriance of the woods ; the white dwellings, looking out from the foliage ; and in the distance, the Indian wigwams curling their smoke against the sky,— all were mingled in one great scene of wild and rural beauty. Pontiac, the Satan of this forest paradise, was accus- tomed to spend the early part ot the summer upon a small island at the opening of the Lake St. Clair, hidden from view .by the high woods that covered the interven- ing Isle au Cochon. « The king and lord of all this country," as Rogers calls him, lived in no royal state. His cabin was a small, oven-shaped structure of bark and rushes. Here he dwelt with his squaws and children ; and here, doubtless, he might often have been seen, care- lessly reclining his naked form on a rush mat, or a bear- skin, like any ordinary warrior. We may fancy the current of his thoughts, the uncurbed passions swelling THE PLOT REVEALED. ICl in his powerful houI, as he revolved the treacheries which, to his savage mind, seemed fair and honorable. At one moment, his fierce heart would burn with the anticipation of vengeance on the detested English ; at another, he would meditate how he best might turn thv, approaching tumults to the furtherance of his own ambitious schemes. Yet we may believe that Pontiac was not a stranger to the high emotion of the patriot hero, the champion not merely of his nation's rights, but of the very existence of his race. He did not dream how desperate a game he was about to play. lie hourly flattered himself with the futile hope of aid from France. In his ignorance, he thought that the Ihitish colonies must give way before the rush of his savage warriors ; when, in truth, all the combined tribes of the forest might have chafed in vain rage against the rock-like strength of the Anglo-Saxon. Looking across an intervening arm of the river, Pontiac could see on its eastern bank the numerous lodges of his Ottawa tribesmen, half hidden among the ragged growth of trees and bushes. On the afternoon of the fifth of May, a Canadian woman, the wife of St. Aubin, one of the principal settlers, crossed over from the western side, and visited the Ottawa village, to obtain from the Indians a supply of maple sugar and venison. She was surprised at finding several of the warriors engaged in filing off the muzzles of their guns, so as to reduce them, stock and all, to the length of about a yard. Returning home in the evening, she mentioned what she had seen to several of her neighbors. Upon this, one of them, the blacksmith of the village, remarked that many of the Indians had lately visited his shop, and attempted to borrow files and saws for a purpose which they would not explain. These circumstances excited the suspicion of the experienced Canadians. Doubtless there were many in the settlement who might, had they chosen, have revealed the plot ; but it is no less certain that the more numerous and respect- able class in the little community had too deep an inter- est in the preservation of peace to countenance the designs II ' 1j ii ■lij 102 THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTTAC. I of Poiitiac. M. Gouin, an old and vvealUiy settlor, wont to tlie commandant, and oonjnrod him to stand Vipon his gnard; bnt (Jhuhvyn, a man of foarloHs tijniT or, give no hood to tho friondly advicio. In tho P<)ttavvattami(! village livod an Oji])\,a •:"i who, if thoro bo truth in tradition, (;ould boast a li^rgc^r snare of boanty than is connnon in the wigwam. She )• '» i i-juitod the (^0 of (iladwyn. He had formed a oonnoetion with her, and she; had beciome nnioh attacihod to him. On the afternoon of the sixth, C^itharine— for so the officers called her— came to the fort, and repaired to (Jladwyn's quarters, bringnig with her a pair of elk-skin moccasons, ornamented with jumMipinc^ work, which he had recpiested her to make. Thoro was sonuithing umisual in her look and manntT. Uvv face was sad and downcnist. She said little, and soon le/t the room ; but the sentinel at the door saw her still lingering at the street corner, though tho hour for closing the gates was nearly come. At length she attracted the notice of (iladwyn himself ; and calling her to him, ho pressed her to declare what was weighing upon her mind. Still she remained for a long time silent, and it was only after nmch urgonc^y and many promises not to betray her, that she revealed her momentous secret. To-morrow, she said, Pontiac will come to the fort with sixty of his chiefs. Each will be armed with a gun, cut short, and hidden under his blanket. Pontiac will demand to hold a council ; and after he has delivered his speech, ho will offer a peace-bolt of wan>pum, holding it in a re- versed position. This will be tho signal of attack. The chiefs will spring up and lire u[)on the officers, and the Indians in the street will fall upon the garrison. Every Englishman will be killed, but not the scalp of a singles Frenchman will be touched. Gladwyn was an officer of signal courage and address. lie thanked his faithful mistress, and, promising a rich reward, told her to go back to her village, that no suspicion iiiij^iiL uc iviiiQicti. iigaiiist iicT. iiiun, caliHig ins subor- dinates together, he imparted what he had heard. The A NIGHT OF ANXIETY. 163 defences of the place were feeble jukI extensive, and the garrison by far too weak to rf^pel a general assault. The force of the Indians at this time is variously estimated at from six hundred to two thousand ; and the commandant grcnitly feared that some wild impulse might precipitate their plan, and that tliey would storm the fort before the morning. Every i)repaniti(^n was made to meet the sudden emergency. Half the garrison were ordered undejr arms, and all the officers prepared to spend the night upon the riimparts. " It rained all day," writes the chronicler, " hvf cleared up towards evening, and there was a very fi - .^anset." Perhaps it was such an one as even now, when all else is changed, may still be seen at times from the eastern shore of the Detroit. A canopy of clouds is spread across the sky, drawn up from the horizon like a curtain, as if to reveal the glory of the west, where lies a transparent sea of licpiid amber immeasurably deep. The sun ban set ; the last glimpse of his burning disk has vanished behind the forest ; but where he sank, the sky glows like a conflagra- ti ^n, and still, from his retreat, he bathes heaven and earth with celestial coloring. The edges of the cloudy curtain are resplendent with gold, and its dark blue drapery is touched with blood-red stains by the floods of fiery radiance. The forests and the shores melt together in rich and shadowy purple, and the waters reflect the splendor of the heavens. Gazing on the gorgeous sub- limity of earth and sky, man may forget his vexed and perturbed humanity. Goaded by passions, racked by vain desires, tossed on the tunmltuous sea of earthly troubles, amid doubt and disappointment, pain and care, he awakens to new hope as he beholds the glory of declining day, and rises in serene strength to meet that majestic smile of God. The light departed, and the colors faded away. Only a dusky redness lingered in the west, and the darkening earth seemed her dull self agaia. Then night descended, heavy and black, on the fierce Indians and the sleepless English. From sunset till dawn, an anxious watch was f^M-'ii^--